U.S. Authorities strip search Indian diplomat (female).

[Ravenman]

@bldysabba

I know people aren’t reading my posts but wow. That was only one line and you still didn’t go through it.

To be fair, that is an example of someone projecting criticism upon you. But in response to your earlier post where you said that 14 hour days seem like a fabrication to you, keep in mind that there have been many, many other documented cases of diplomatic staff forcing domestic help to work illegally (and insanely) long hours for meager pay. Here is a report from the investigative arm of Congress, which says it found 42 specific cases of domestic help being subject to some sort of human trafficking by diplomats living in the US. The report also states that the Department of Justice was investigating other cases not counted in the 42.

There’s also specific allegations covered in the press every now and then:

In that case, the woman, Marichu Suarez Baoanan, 39, said her employer, Lauro L. Baja Jr., then an ambassador to the United Nations, and his wife forced her instead to work more than 120 hours a week as a domestic servant in their town house, prevented her from leaving the house alone and paid her only $100 a month. A lawyer for the Bajas has denied the charges and said Ms. Baoanan was trying to use the case to secure a visa that would allow her to remain in the country.

Hm… an employer accused of providing illegally low pay and illegally long hours saying that the maid was actually setting herself up to get to the United States? That sounds familiar… NY Times article from 2008.

Here is another NY Times article about two different maids working for different Indian diplomats:

One plaintiff, Santosh Bhardwaj, said she signed a contract in 2009 to work for Prabhu Dayal, then the consul general, for $10 an hour. She was to work 40 hours a week and receive days off and overtime. . . . But Ms. Bhardwaj said she was subjected to nearly a year of “forced labor and psychological coercion.” She was paid an average of $300 a month, the suit said, and often required to work longer than 12-hour days. . . .

The other plaintiff, Shanti Gurung . . . said in the lawsuit that she was forced to work 16-hour days, to sleep on the living room floor and to give daily massages to Ms. Malhotra. She was often yelled at and was once even berated for eating a slice of bread without permission. She was allowed to leave the apartment alone only for chores, and one day in 2009, while the family was out, she fled to the home of a woman she had met while shopping for the defendants, her lawsuit said.

Perhaps those three maids I cited were all fabricating things in order to get into the US? Surely no employer could ever make someone work extremely long hours… Or could they?

[bldysabba]

@Snowboarder_Bo

No.

Signing a contract that you believe is legal and that you later find out is illegal does not make the contract a “grey area”; it makes it a clearly “black-or-white area” kind of thing. We do not seek, thru the law, to reward people who’re clever enough to fool or trick other people.

Heh. All of you are coming from the perspective that Khobragade has exploited and cheated Richards. My thinking about it is this is how any good con works. My hunch is the one being cheated is Khobragade. She was approached by Richards for a job. Khobragade saw the opportunity to benefit from an illegal situation, she took it. This still makes her in the wrong. You can’t cheat an honest man after all. But I’m not convinced that the maid was a victim here.

[bldysabba]

@Ravenman

Here is another NY Times article about two different maids working for different Indian diplomats:Perhaps those three maids I cited were all fabricating things in order to get into the US? Surely no employer could ever make someone work extremely long hours… Or could they?

Why is the other side of the coin incredible? No employee could be making up allegations of abuse to secure access to the USA?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@bldysabba

Heh. All of you are coming from the perspective that Khobragade has exploited and cheated Richards. My thinking about it is this is how any good con works. My hunch is the one being cheated is Khobragade. She was approached by Richards for a job. Khobragade saw the opportunity to benefit from an illegal situation, she took it. This still makes her in the wrong. You can’t cheat an honest man after all. But I’m not convinced that the maid was a victim here.

You are making conflicting statements now. If Khobrigade, as you say, “saw the opportunity to benefit from an illegal situation, she took it” then how is she possibly the one being cheated?

And let me get this straight: you think an uneducated woman who works as a domestic servant concocted an intricate and devious plan that relied on knowledge of foreign laws and customs and then “tricked” a lawyer, a woman who works as a general consul for an embassy, into signing an illegal contract and then adhering to it, so that the servant could…?

You seem to making a lot of suppositions and assumptions here; what have you read that makes you think this scenario is even remotely plausible?

[bldysabba]

Why I tend to believe Khobragade is that the agreement they had sounds really fair(albeit illegal) to me. INR 30k + room and board is a lot of money. No maid makes half that much in India. As I’ve pointed out, I was making very close to that amount not long ago, and I have a Master’s degree(admittedly I was working in a somewhat low paying field). Had she really been doing this to exploit someone, she could easily have paid much less.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@bldysabba

Why is the other side of the coin incredible? No employee could be making up allegations of abuse to secure access to the USA?

The other side of the coin is incredible because you have no evidence to support it. There is evidence that, at this point, seems to show illegalities. Do you have video or audio recordings of Richards saying that she devised this complicated and risky plot to gain access to the USA, or is it all just wishful thinking?

[Raygun99]

@bldysabba

Heh. All of you are coming from the perspective that Khobragade has exploited and cheated Richards. My thinking about it is this is how any good con works. My hunch is the one being cheated is Khobragade. She was approached by Richards for a job. Khobragade saw the opportunity to benefit from an illegal situation, she took it. This still makes her in the wrong. You can’t cheat an honest man after all. But I’m not convinced that the maid was a victim here.

I bet this sounded really plausible and convincing in your head, huh?

[Enginerd]

@bldysabba

It’s not? Break it down for me.

You suggested 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, but I suspect it’s closer to 6:00 am to 8:00 pm. A couple of assumptions, based on my brother’s kids’ schedules and needs (3 and 5, but not that far off):

1. Khobagrade and her husband work 7:30-5:00, and are gone from the house 6:30-6:00.
2. The kids start school/kindergarten at 8:30 am. Four year old gets out at 12:30, 7 year old at 3:30.
3. It takes an hour to get anywhere in New York City (not an assumption so much as a fact of life).

5:30 am: Prepare breakfast for mom and dad (to be ready at 6:00) and kids (ready at 7:00). Clean up between breakfasts.
7:00 am: serve kids breakfast. When they’re done, get them ready for school - dressed, face washed, teeth brushed, etc…
7:30 am: Bring kids to school (arrive at 8:30 am, get back home at 9:30 am)
9:30 - 11:00 am: Clean up anything missed in the kitchen, once over of entire house, thorough cleaning of one-two rooms on a rotating schedule. This is the only time the maid is really able to clean stuff without other duties or people in the way.
11:00 am: Pick up 4YO from school (arrive at 12:30, home at 1:00).
1:00 pm: Feed, wash, entertain 4YO for a little while before it’s time to go get 7YO.
2:30 pm: Take 4YO with her to go get 7YO from school (arrive 3:30, back home at 4:30).
4:30 pm: Snacks for kids, get them playing nicely at home. Start dinner, laundry, whatever else needs to be done. Some days there might be a break in here, other days there won’t - it depends on the kids needs at the time and what’s for dinner.
6:15 pm: Get kids washed up for dinner when mom and dad get home - dinner 6:30-7:30 pm.
7:30 pm: Get 4YO into bath, cleaned up, and ready for bed.
8:00 pm: 4YO to bed, 7 YO can probably get him/herself ready for bed with minimal supervision.
8:30 pm: Clean up after dinner.
9:00 pm: Off the clock!

If you assume a half hour break in the afternoon, that’s 15 hours a weekday (75 hours/week). Of course, this assumes the kids aren’t doing anything other than school and home - if they have anything outside of that minimal schedule it’s more work for the maid and more time on the weekends she’ll have to spend making up for the stuff she missed during the week. Weekends we’ll assume the parents take care of the kids, but the maid still has to go grocery shopping, do any cleaning or laundry she didn’t get done during the week, and prepare and clean up meals for the family. It’s pretty easy for me to see 100 hours a week in this arrangement.

I understand that you do your own housework and don’t spend nearly that much time on it - I do too. But there’s a lot of stuff that “should” be done that I just let go because I don’t want to do it. If I were paying for it, though, I’d expect it to be done.

As long as I was paying more than $3 an hour, at any rate.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@bldysabba

Why I tend to believe Khobragade is that the agreement they had sounds really fair(albeit illegal) to me. INR 30k + room and board is a lot of money. No maid makes half that much in India. As I’ve pointed out, I was making very close to that amount not long ago, and I have a Master’s degree(admittedly I was working in a somewhat low paying field). Had she really been doing this to exploit someone, she could easily have paid much less.

Ah, so no evidence, just your “gut feeling” that the person with the higher social status must be right and the person with lower social status must be wrong/evil/lying?

[Alessan]

Finding a legal loophole to force your boss to pay you more money is the American Dream. Richard is my hero.

[bldysabba]

@Snowboarder_Bo

You are making conflicting statements now. If Khobrigade, as you say, “saw the opportunity to benefit from an illegal situation, she took it” then how is she possibly the one being cheated?

And let me get this straight: you think an uneducated woman who works as a domestic servant concocted an intricate and devious plan that relied on knowledge of foreign laws and customs and then “tricked” a lawyer, a woman who works as a general consul for an embassy, into signing an illegal contract and then adhering to it, so that the servant could…?

You seem to making a lot of suppositions and assumptions here; what have you read that makes you think this scenario is even remotely plausible?

She’s being cheated because the maid intends to ‘defect’ in the language of game theory. I don’t see the conflict. All cons work like that.

And yes I think it was planned. It’s not that intricate or complicated. The maid’s husband works for an embassy in New Delhi. She herself has worked at the US embassy in the past. There have been three similar cases in the past few years involving Indian diplomats(Can you believe how stupid they are?).
I think it very plausible that the maid knew about this. Uneducated is not equivalent to stupid. (Not that she’s uneducated, at the very least she seems to know how to write Hindi)

[bldysabba]

@Alessan

Finding a legal loophole to force your boss to pay you more money is the American Dream. Richard is my hero.

Heh. I agree that she’s made out very well for herself. I have explicitly said earlier, good for her.

[Enginerd]

@bldysabba

Why I tend to believe Khobragade is that the agreement they had sounds really fair(albeit illegal) to me. INR 30k + room and board is a lot of money. No maid makes half that much in India. As I’ve pointed out, I was making very close to that amount not long ago, and I have a Master’s degree(admittedly I was working in a somewhat low paying field). Had she really been doing this to exploit someone, she could easily have paid much less.

So then why the fraudulent visa application?

[bldysabba]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Ah, so no evidence, just your “gut feeling” that the person with the higher social status must be right and the person with lower social status must be wrong/evil/lying?

Like I said - the evidence that we have shows an agreement that is fair but illegal, and apart from that we have allegations from a person who stands to benefit from making those allegations. If you want to call that going on a hunch, you can.

[bldysabba]

@Enginerd

So then why the fraudulent visa application?

Because it was illegal? I don’t deny that. I also think the maid had to know what was in the fraudulent application too. She would, in all probability have to go through a visa interview. She had to have been prepared for it.

[Enginerd]

@bldysabba

Like I said - the evidence that we have shows an agreement that is fair but illegal, and apart from that we have allegations from a person who stands to benefit from making those allegations. If you want to call that going on a hunch, you can.

Richards benefited only from the enforcement of laws, not from the illegality. Khobagrade, not Richards, was the person who stood to benefit the most from the illegal agreement - she got the services of a maid she would otherwise never have been able to afford.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@bldysabba

Like I said - the evidence that we have shows an agreement that is fair but illegal, and apart from that we have allegations from a person who stands to benefit from making those allegations. If you want to call that going on a hunch, you can.

There is no such thing as “an agreement that is fair but illegal”.

[Falchion]

@Snowboarder_Bo

There is no such thing as “an agreement that is fair but illegal”.

That shows an awful lot of faith in the government.

[bldysabba]

@Enginerd

Richards benefited only from the enforcement of laws, not from the illegality. Khobagrade, not Richards, was the person who stood to benefit the most from the illegal agreement - she got the services of a maid she would otherwise never have been able to afford.

Untrue. The maid got a job that paid her much higher than she would have otherwise gotten because of the illegality. As I’ve repeated many times before, paying American minimum wages would have made her unaffordable. She would be in India, unemployed/working at wages of a third or half of what she got from the illegal agreement.

[bldysabba]

@Snowboarder_Bo

There is no such thing as “an agreement that is fair but illegal”.

Come on. No law is ever unfair?