SEARCH
Rep. Ellison Joins Faith and Labor Leaders in Urging Release of Jailed Workers |
|
 |
||||
|
||||
Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, follows up on the Indian guest workers who this past spring and summer waged a hunger strike for justice. The welders and pipe fitters had been lured from their native India to the United States with promises of green cards and good jobs at Signal International’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. Once there, they found themselves held in modern-day forced labor, victims of a human-trafficking scheme under the guise of the H-2B guest worker program. Now, 23 of the workers have been jailed by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Community leaders in Minnesota—including Congressman Keith Ellison and the Rev. Craig Johnson, bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—issued a call for the release of 23 workers from India held in the Fargo, N.D., jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
At the news conference, Johnson told a group gathered in front of the U.S. Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis:
It is important that people of faith stand in solidarity with those among us who have been wrongly accused.
Ellison called the situation perverse.
It’s unjust, it’s wrong and we’re not going to stand silent while it goes on.
He and other faith leaders joined in a 24-hour fast to show solidarity. They also contacted the U.S. Department of Justice to urge the workers’ release and an investigation of Signal International.
“To Signal International, we say, ’shame on you!’” said Ray Waldron, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.
(You can take action by sending an e-mail to members to Congress through the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ), here.)
Saket Soni of the NOWCRJ said many of the 300 workers sold homes or property to make the trip and paid $20,000 each to a recruiter. In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of immigrants were lured to the Gulf Coast with such promises, Soni said.
When they arrived, they discovered squalid living conditions. After they tried to form a union to improve their lot, they were threatened with deportation, said Soni.
Some of the workers contacted NOWCRJ, which helped them report the situation to the Justice Department. But the department is dragging its feet on investigating the case, while some of the workers have been swept up in immigration raids.
The workers, who entered the country with guest worker visas, are really victims of human trafficking, said Soni. Earlier this year, the men marched on foot from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to urge the Justice Department to investigate the case and to allow them “continued presence,” a temporary visa status that allows victims of trafficking to work in the country while the investigation is still ongoing.
Some of the workers later got jobs in North Dakota, where they were picked up by immigration officials and have been held for nearly two months. The workers at the Fargo jail are currently engaged in a hunger strike.
Ellison said the workers’ plight might seem far-removed from the lives of most Americans, but their case has implications for everyone.
When these workers are exploited in this manner, this diminishes all labor. This exploits all labor.
In a statement, Signal International said the company’s
employment practices and facilities have been inspected by representatives of the Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of State.
The news conference was coordinated by ISAIAH, a Twin Cities faith organization. Several of its members participated in the solidarity fast, the organization said.
Faith and community groups also have held rallies in Fargo to support the jailed workers. Supporters are urging people to contact Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, which oversee the Department of Justice.
4 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Welcome to America! Is there any doubt now why unions are so desperately needed and why the Employee Free choice Bill needs to be priority number one?
The federal government should force Signal International to pay these Indians way back home (one way) and pay them full back wages they are rightfully due. They should also pay them for the time they were incarcerated and refund the fees they paid to get here. Allied Signal needs to learn a lesson and not get away with abuse like this. It’s no wonder America is no longer respected in many places abroad.
As far as welders and pipe fitters go, why don’t they just hire locally through the union hall and not face all this mess?
Even the jobs that can’t be off-shored aren’t safe under Bush/Cheney. We can only HOPE that the corporate lobbyists aren’t as successful under Obama/Biden (although with the continuing influx of “formerly” free-trade Clintonistas, even the next administration needs to be watched).
Companies importing foreign workers in this economy should be jailed, not the workers.
Neither foreign nor domestic workers are the enemy.
The enemies are phony trade agreements, and phony, exploitive “guest worker” laws, both of which favor unscrupulous businesses. Those phony agreements were passed by phonies in Congress.
It is hard for me to believe that qualified U.S. workers were unavailable to perform the work in question. It wasn’t a matter of getting the job done, it was more about getting it done cheap!
Without question there are instances where foreign workers are needed to augment the domestic labor force. Agriculture is one example. Be that as it may, there is absolutely no civilized reason to deny foreign or domestic workers what they have coming to them.
If the job performance of Congress was graded in the same way our job performance is graded, most Members of Congress would be looking for new employment. They would have been “pink-slipped” long, long ago.
The corporate crumb-bums and the ICE crumb-bums that ordered the jailing of the workers from India are the real criminals.
It is not a sin to want to work. It is a sin to punish or exploit people who seek nothing more than to make a living.
Perhaps sometime soon the American working class will recover from its battered person syndrome. Perhaps in the not to distant future we’ll stop blaming ourselves for the injustices committed by the corporate/government combine. Perhaps we’ll learn to stop rewarding our tormentors. That’s what we do when we re-elect them.
There are some great friends of the working class in Congress. Our job is to replace the other two-thirds who aren’t!
It is up to organized labor and it’s allies to put pressure on the Obama Administration to pass EFCA along with other badly needed legislation.
While Obama is a friend of working people, we cannot and we must not become passive and expect for him to do our fighting for us! Great progress was made during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt not out of the goodness of Roosevelt’s heart, but because the CIO engaged in militant strikes, sit downs, etc. We must never forget the lessons of our labor history!
ICE has proven over and over again to be a willing puppet of the bosses. ICE should be dismantled and rebuilt to truly protect the nation from enemies from within, not workers from foreign nations!