There is simply no excuse for what this federal judge did. In the interest of foreign relations, the judge should have contacted the State Dept before proceeding.
Unless the State Dept WAS aware that an arrest warrant was being issued and OK’d the deal. (Did the Obama administration drop the foreign-relations ball or were they innocent and ignorant of the whole situation?)
India is responding and not in a good way. U.S./India relations have been made more difficult because of this.
She hasn’t been proven to have done anything yet. Remember Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Circus airport arrest, perp walk, big international incident, pissed off France, lots of outrage and demonization over his sexcapades and then the case fell apart and all charges were dropped. But by then he was totally ruined. Given that precedent and the fact that India is retaliating against U.S. diplomats, I wish this had been handled a little more delicately.
That depends. The Indian law for the rich, or the Indian law for the poor?
maid’s food, stay n other diff expenses were covered apart frm the salary she gets. us s/w engineers also get abt 50$ per day when in US Temporarily apart frm food stay travel n indian salary.
the only issue is US Interpretation of article 41, pls read post 64
Hardly the first Indian to have been abused by a bunch of gun-toting cowboys.
Straight out of the Mahabharatta!
Do claims of diplomatic or consular immunity have to be validated by the Ambassador or Consul? If so, was immunity denied in this case?
What’s Indian law got to do with anything? She committed the crime in the US, whilst subject to US law. India needs to mind its own business here.
Its business, of course, does include the arresting of any American consuls there if there’s good reason to suspect them of criminal behaviour, so if there’s any that are they should probably be a bit careful…
Sir Charles James Napier addressed a similar question awhile ago:
So, sure: India has a custom of treating servants like slaves. We have a custom of arresting people who treat servants like slaves. Let us all act according to national customs.
I gotta say, this story has it all:
-“We can’t judge them by our standards!” Implication: those people aren’t as advanced as we are, we can’t expect them to understand that slavery is wrong.
-“That poor woman being strip-searched!” Implication: women can’t withstand the consequences of their action the way that men can.
-“It’d be one thing if this was happening to a poor person, but this is a middle-class person!” Implication: it’s more important to treat rich people with respect than to treat poor people with respect.
Racism, sexism, and overwhelmingly classism. Pretty impressive for a single story.
Falsifying paperwork? Apparently she was paying her “domestic help” something like a third of minimum wage. You don’t think exploitation of another human being to be a crime?
I’m getting rather sick about hearing of the systematic exploitation of domestic help, and I don’t think “they’re from another country” is a valid excuse. If you’re going to employ someone while in the US you have to follow US law.
It probably is, but it’s most likely a different minimum wage, not a lack of minimum wage.
Incorrect. There is a separate minimum wage for people expected to get regular tips. Also, that plus tips is supposed to be at least standard minimum wage and if it isn’t the employer is supposed to make up the difference.
The rules behind that arrangement are also subject to law.
Why should the US apologize for upholding US law? I’m sorry if you think enforcing US law on US soil is outrageous - no, second thought, I’m not sorry. If you don’t understand that that US law applies on US soil screw you.
Just because she works for an embassy does not give her carte blanche to do whatever heck she pleases. It’s not an absolute immunity.
Excuse me? You’re advocating that we let criminals go free while they exploit the labor of others?
>Yawn< Do you know how much “America bashing” I’ve seen in the past half century?
Don’t do this shit. Your English is shaky enough, when you start writing in abbreviations and L33T crap it becomes incomprehensible.
From what I can puzzle out from that gibberish, you seem to think an “Indian salary” is appropriate in the US. No, it’s not. We have laws regulating the minimum you can pay domestic help. Failure to comply is called theft of services and is a crime here.
The Maid is just some greedy woman who has been used by some assortment of NGOs in connivance with the DA and the State Dept to humiliate India.
India needs to mete out the same treatment to a similar senior US consular officer.
Btw Bharara’s language in his statement on this case indicates his active involvement in orchestrating this disgusting episode.
Maid’s family given US visas just before diplomat’s arrest
Sorry about bad English and being incomprehensible. I meant that apart from the salary, the maid also got free food, dwelling and various other things. The merits of the case aside, this is
A. Not a grave offense
B. Arresting, handcuffing in public and strip searching is not respectable treatment.
Please read points 2 and 3 of article 41 of Vienna Convention on consular relations which is applicable in this case. Please read here.
But still, if thats US’s interpretation of that, we(Indians) should give them our own interpretation of article 41, acting in a way which may upset the US.
My (rough) understanding is that you can pay employees with room and board, but you have to first calculate the proper wage and then you can deduct the fair market value of the benefits. Another issue, however, is the room and board have to be considered for the employee’s benefit to count as “income” (the reverse situation often comes where an employee tries to claim that an in-kind benefit is not income, because it was for the employers benefit, and thus reduce his tax liability). If, for example, the maid was expected to eat meals with the children or be available to respond to them in the middle of the night, I’m not sure those benefits count as wages. If they simply set her up in her own apartment and left her alone, then they could deduct the market value of the rent from her pay.
Right or wrong, “grave crime” has consistently be interpreted to be a felony offense. (Apparently, in Australia, it’s been defined as a crime punishable by more than 5 years). It seems clear to me that visa fraud constitutes a “grave crime” under the convention.
I sort of understand the complaint that the US has a particularly public and humiliating approach to arresting people (although the notion that it should be different for women or rich people offends me). The strip search complaint seems unpersuasive (of course you’re going to search people in custody), but I get the objection to public arrests and the “perp walk.”
But to the extent that the complaint is that exploitation and fraud are such integral parts of Indian culture (remind me never to do business with an Indian) that it is somehow offensive to enforce those laws against an Indian in the United States is absurd, it just baffles me.
Absolutely right, and it bears repeating. Wait staff is entitled to earn minimum wage. The employer does not have to initially pay minimum wage, because the theory is that the tips earned will more than cover the difference between the minimum wage and what the employer actually pays.
BUT – if the wait person’s tips in a given pay period, when added to the base pay provided by the employer, do not amount to minimum wage, the employer must supplement the wages in order to achieve the minimum wage mark.
The remark which Broomstick refuted was utterly ignorant, and it’s a mistake I see a lot, even on this “fighting ignorance” board. Broomstick is absolutely correct.
This sounds an awful lot like a pile of irrelevant nonsense: Sikhs are persecuting Indians, and let’s list every time one of the busiest prosecutors in the U.S. has prosecuted an Indian? Obviously this Indian-American prosecutor hates Indians. None of this has any bearing on the merits of the case.
If so, that should be easy to establish. Why was 90% of her compensation being handled this way?
And so your concern about what “grave crime” means is leading to you suggest that an American official be arrested for trumped-up reasons.
Your commitment to the rule of law appears to be paper-thin.