You think it ended 150 years ago?

Not quite. Today, Law Enforcement estimates that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 people held in slavery…

Right here in the US of A.

In a previous post Man Adopts, Then Molests Children – what was going on was slavery. Selling his adopted children as sex slaves to other pedophiles.

In the chat transcript, “F.L.” is asked how he got access to a child so young. “Adopted,” he replied, and said that the process was “not so hard … esp (sic) for a black boy.”

The video states that many of the children forced into sex slavery in the US are minority children – specifically because there is little attention in the MSM to their plight. Just as in the tragic case of Jada Justice, the MSM only reluctantly became engaged when local authorities, and bloggers jumped in.

But there is more -

Surrendering Innocence

Leaving kids locked up in the car,

Mom’s shopping ignorant to the

Horn screeching for the world to

Hear each whisper and gasp, a

Baby honking the horn just to

Get us to listen that our lives

Have become like thunderstorms,

No rest for the sky to split,

No time for sun to set,

No rhyme to change the

Scheme to exchange innocence

For beach breezes where little

Toddlers running naked on the

Beach isn’t deemed as cute anymore

But an injustice, for us

Who can speak for the unborn

As if someone has drowned them

Out with convenience as if

Responsibility doesn’t apply

To me, has this become our

Geography, our terrain in our

Brain, thinking and meddling

Over how much money we’re

Willing to pay to get a three year

Old a businessman’s pleasure

A locked up cage, a robot

Mechanism twisting bolts

And washers, petting and

Surrendering innocence

As the lavender soap has

Absorbed dirt under each

Clear fingernail, no longer

Pure white after the dirt has

Sunk in, and isn’t this just

The beginning, mud soaking

Puddles, a surrendering of

Innocence, no more children

With free spirits just toddlers

Who have lost goggles in the

Deep end, can’t search the ocean

Floor anymore, can’t splash in

The rain anymore, you must

Be swept away with a world

That will use you for their

Selfish pleasure and how

Long have we had the

Upper hand, how long

We’ve had to understand

That making things right

Should keep us at night,

That trafficking needs

Some red lights and those

Districts need sunset splits

And angels emptying heaven

For hoping in him is a surrender

To destroy all in the way of

Innocence, true repentance and

True punishment for those

That ignore his presence,

And this is the essence of

The problem, embracing

The surrender to innocence,

Keeping it pure, keeping the

Little sister spoken for

Before its too late, before

Corrupt men still hate what is

Light, consumed by flames

Of fire and fire in his eyes,

Endless sulfur, endless burn,

Is your little perversity worth

Eternity, is staying silent worth

Serenity, or will you raise your

Voice, will you and I make the

Right choice.

Breast bruised, brains battered,
Skin scarred, soul shattered
Can’t scream-neighbors stare,
Cry for help, no one’s there

Stanza from a poem by Nenna Nehru, a battered Indian Woman

Despite differences in cultures and ideologies, women seem to face a consistent bias regardless of where they live. Tied to the social expectations of feminine behavior, victimization of women reflects a universal value placed upon them by men.

Violence against women occurs throughout the life cycle: Pre-birth is marked by sex selective abortion (China, India); battering during pregnancy (emotional and physical effects on woman, effects on the birth outcome); and coerced pregnancy (i.e. mass rape in war). Infancy carries the threat of female infanticide; emotional and physical abuse; and disparity in access to food and medical care for girl infants. Adolescents can be scarred by child marriage; genital mutilation; sexual abuse by family members and strangers; more disparity in the access to food and medical care; and child prostitution. Dating and courtship violence (i.e. date rape in the United States, acid throwing in Bangladesh) as well as economically coerced sex ( Africa); sexual abuse in the workplace; rape; sexual harassment, forced prostitution; trafficking of women. The reproductive age carries the risk of abuse of women by intimate partners; marital rape; dowry abuse and murders; partner homicide; psychological abuse; sexual abuse in the workplace; sexual harassment; rape; abuse of women with disabilities. Being older does not reduce the risk of victimization. In the U.S. the only country where records exist, elder abuse affects mostly women.

Quite consistently, women are, “defined according to traditional patriarchal images and within the patriarchal ideologies and structures of national and international relations”. Judith Zinsser, researcher for the United Nations.

Crimes against women are based on their role in society, as a daughter, mother, wife, and sister. Women are never judged as persons, and always judged as passive to their roles. A man is evaluated as a man, aggressively responding to his situation, within his roles in life, as father, son brother, husband, secondary to his gender.

This subjectivity to patriarchy is well illustrated in dowry burnings, popular in India. Murder, generally accepted as a crime against humanity takes on a different persona when related to brides who for one reason or another, experience with their husbands and husband’s families conflict over their dowries. In areas that require a marriage settlement, dowries become a powerful tool for moving up through social strata. In a firmly patriarchal society, the esteem of the male depends on the “purity” of the female. Not only a financial inheritance, the dowry reflects the moral purity of the bride. Indian dowry effectively functions to disinherit women and promote their economic dependency on men which is the real crux of dowry murders. When the dowry is no longer satisfactory, the bride becomes vulnerable to harassment, assault, and death.

Murder is illegal, but social norms in India validate the acceptance of such practice, marking it virtually impossible to punish anyone participating. Families involved in this practice place tremendous significance upon the material value of the union between two families and a financial gain for at least one. When the woman is sacrificed, the families protect each other from civil prosecution, further ingraining the value of men and valuelessness of women.

Think about rape. In our culture evidence of rape is evaluated by a perceived participation by the woman (i.e. how was she dressed, did she invite sex and then change her mind, was she using drugs). A recent story of a young girl in Pakistan who became pregnant as the result of rape. Unable to convince the court that rape had occurred and since her pregnancy was taken as proof that sexual intercourse outside of marriage had taken place, she was thirty lashes and three years imprisonment. She gave birth to the child in prison (a girl). Because of this situation, women are more afraid than before to bring a case of rape to court, and in turn this could, of course, encourage rapist. There is an easy transformation from victim to offender. Her actions did not change, only the subjective political observation of them. In the United States, a woman illustrated how she was victimized into criminalization:

“She was a Chicana introduced to drugs at the age of eleven; a victim of brutal domestic violence that caused her to miscarry twice; a drug user addicted first to heroine then to the so called cure, methadone; finally a mother forcibly separated from her daughter on account of her convictions and incarceration, and, finally, a woman who died in prison of a brain hemorrhage, the cumulative effect of a lifetime of beatings”.

Written from her death bed.

I hope to have shed some light on the epidemic of violence being perpetrated by us (men). I hope that we will no longer live by a “criminal code” of silence and non action. Its not what you say and do when women are around. Its what you say and do when they are not. Take a stand in the fight to end violence against women.

Smuggled Immigrants Raise U.S. Terrorism Fears Concern about a terrorist threat to the United States is growing among American intelligence officials due to a recent upsurge in the number of East Africans who have been caught trying to enter the US illegally.

Citing an “internal government assessment” that it had obtained, the Associated Press reported last week that the US is focusing new attention on networks that smuggle people from Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan.

These four countries are among 35 confidentially listed by the US Department of Homeland Security as being of “special interest” due to the alleged presence of terrorists in their territories.

A total of 159 citizens of the four East African countries have been captured in the past several months as they tried to enter the US without permission. That compares to 125 for all of last year and a total of 22 in 2003.
Of the 159 caught this year, 138 came from Eritrea, the AP reported.
The United States has a particularly thorny relationship with Eritrea, which Washington accuses of supporting an Islamist force inside Somalia that the US also labels as a terrorist organisation. A senior State Department official warned last year that the US may designate Eritrea as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Djibouti, on the other hand, is among the United States’ closest allies in Africa. The tiny country strategically situated on the Horn hosts a US military base that conducts counter-terrorism operations throughout the sub-region.
American officials acknowledge that most of the East Africans trying to enter the US illegally have no ties to terrorism and are motivated by hopes of achieving a better life.
The four East African countries listed as of “special interest” to US security agencies are part of a group made up mainly of majority-Muslim states.

Intensified worries about aliens entering the US from East African “special interest” countries stem from a court case involving two Ghanians who specialised in smuggling East Africans into the United States.

One of the two men, Sampson Lovelace Boateng (known as Pastor), recently pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington to charges that he recruited East Africans who paid for his assistance in attempting to enter the US.
US authorities charged that Mr Boateng, along with alleged co-conspirator Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim, provided the East Africans with phony Mexican visas that enabled them to travel from Africa to South America and Central America en route to the United States.
The pair also arranged to bribe African officials to facilitate their clients’ efforts to reach the United States, the US indictment charges.

Particularly alarming to US officials is the apparent success the smugglers enjoyed in bringing citizens of “special interest” countries into the United States.

“Getting into US is no problem at all,” Mr Ibrahim boasted in an e-mail message intercepted by US authorities. “That’s what I do best.”
Mr Ibrahim and Mr Boateng were arrested last year. Their activities are said to have accounted for most of the East Africans who entered the US illegally in the past couple of years.

“Criminal smuggling organisations earn millions of dollars through the ruthless exploitation of illegal aliens,” Julie L. Myers, a security official for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, told the Associated Press.

“By attacking these organised criminal networks in a comprehensive way, we are shutting down vulnerabilities in our country and in theirs.”

Anti-immigrant fever grips the nation

U.S. needs reasonable immigration reform

African Smuggling Rings Pose Threat

Lets take our paranoia to the next level. Not that there is NOT a problem, there certainly is! America is still guilty of knee jerk, treat the symptom and not the cause. All I hear, is how “terrorists and criminals” are infiltrating the US to cause us harm. Wow! That’s the baby in the bath water … Nurturing this attitude is a ploy to cover up inadequate US policies. There has always been resentment for anyone different. The United States is becoming less and less “United” over the immigration issue. Every single one of us whose ancestors arrived AFTER 800 A.D. is an immigrant, invader or accidental tourist! Arrivals AFTER the 1600s (criminals, misfits and the persecuted), decided to set up their own country, declaring freedom and equality in the 1700s (with the exclusion of the host population). NOW from the early 1900s to present, America has decided to FILTER any further immigrants onto this land. The land of freedom, democracy and hope is an exclusive club that is suffering from their past myopic, elitist decisions. Decisions, (based upon Europe’s imperialist mindset) that were exclusive to those privileged few invaders, who set up a powerful nation, but, failed to make adequate provision for the indigenous population and future immigrants. The American Myth has attracted the hopeful and desparate world wide … the advertising has been awesome. Now, the infrastructure shows inadequate accomodation. Calling to the world to taste our wine, then denying them a place at the table is cruel. The land of opportunity is a scam. Opportunity is available to only the invited.

America has become the world wide poster child for bait and switch. We build fences … we chase and encarcerate. We are NOT addressing the problem by scapegoating immigrants as terrorists or “low lifes”. Drug criminals are a different problem and are NOT being impacted by the “crackdown” on those poor suckers trying to support their families back home. The dragnet is targeted on the southern border. Canada “is more like we are”, no fence needed. Al Qaeda flies in from Europe and points EAST under tourist and student visas with plenty of cash in their pockets. Africans and other 3rd world immigrants, fleeing for their lives, must use the discount method, Mexico. Again, criminals are NOT impacted by fences, but they do take advantage of those travelers, fleece them, then smuggle them across the border in horrid transport, into slavery or worse. America’s paranoia allows the criminals to charge more for their services. They recruit travelers for criminal operations for payback. Throwing fences across the southern border is NOT the bullseye of the immigration problem, it is another racist calamity. Because, forced to live UNDER the legal radar, has created MORE criminals. They have to eat, feed their families and try to assimilate without drawing the attention of the authorities. The immigration issue must address the causes and actual circumstance before a real solution can be proposed.

(“You can receive millions of dollars for helping the Anti-Taliban Force catch Al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all of your people”)

When China offered a bounty for capturing, killing or detaining the Uyghur (pronounced “Weeer”), the US Military obliged. Conveniently, they categorized the Uyghur as terrorists, because China says so … China has more influence than our own legal system. How many readers have ever heard about these people? The Uyghur are treated as bad or worse than Tibetans. Its a religious thing, Uyghur are Muslims. China has a greedy ally who will do anything for money … of course, we’re rounding up terrorists, too. Unethical behavior seldom makes media headlines, unless someone blows the whistle very loud and long, like for Tillman.

SALON In 2001 a group of 18 Uighurs, an ethnic minority from Xinjiang province in western China, was living together in a camp in Afghanistan when the coalition bombing started. They claim that they fled to the Afghan mountains, were led across the border to Pakistan by some other travelers, and were sold to the United States for bounty money. Five other Uighurs also ended up in Guantánamo, possibly sold to the United States as well.

Most of these men have been cleared for release since 2003, yet remain in Guantánamo because they can’t return to China, and neither the United States nor any other country has been willing to take them in. While five of the Uighurs were resettled in Albania in 2005, 16 others remain housed in one of the most draconian facilities in Guantánamo, reportedly because they threw feces and urine at prison guards following a dispute about the Koran in May 2007. But instead of receiving a 30- or 90-day punishment, as is common in U.S. prisons for disruptive behavior, the Uighurs were moved into one of the highest-security, most restrictive parts of the facility — indefinitely.

The Tibetans you’ve never heard of

America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men

China: Religious Repression of Uighur Muslims

Architecture of Xinjiang Suppression Detailed

“The worldwide campaign against terrorism has given Beijing the perfect excuse to crack down harder than ever in Xinjiang,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Other Chinese enjoy a growing freedom to worship, but the Uighurs, like the Tibetans, find that their religion is being used as a tool of control.”

China ‘crushing Muslim Uighurs’

China has been accused by two US-based human rights groups of conducting a “crushing campaign of religious repression” against Muslim Uighurs.

China Confirms Protests by Uighur Muslims

SHANGHAI — Chinese officials said Wednesday that they were grappling with ethnic unrest on a second front, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims protested Chinese rule last month even as Tibetans rioted in the southwest.

FindLaw By JOANNE MARINER, human rights attorney

Uighurs in Albania Most Americans have never heard of the Uighurs and wouldn’t be able to find Albania on a map. And if the Uighurs are obscure, then Uighurs in Albania are obscurity squared: an alien people in a faraway place.

But there are now five Uighurs in Albania, and how they ended up there deserves attention. It’s a story of superpower politics, ethnic oppression, and the limits of the law. It highlights a problem that the United States has brought on itself: what to do with the hundreds of detainees who are currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, some of whom cannot be returned home.

China to Afghanistan to Cuba

The Uighurs are Turkic Muslims from the Xinjiang region in far western China. A group of them were in Afghanistan when war began in 2001 and were captured in the wake of the fighting, some by Pakistani bounty hunters. Twenty-two Uighurs were sent to Guantanamo, along with other detainees deemed the “worst of the worst.”

By late 2003, having interviewed them extensively, U.S. officials concluded that most of the Uighur detainees were not a threat. Five of them, in fact, were found not to be “enemy combatants” at all, while ten more were deemed to be low-risk enough to merit release.

But while bringing the Uighurs to Cuba was easy, getting them off the island was not. They could not be sent to China, their country of citizenship, for fear of persecution. As part of the “fight against three evils” — terrorism, religious extremism and separatism – the Chinese government has cracked down hard against its Uighur minority. Accusing them of plotting bombings and other sabotage, the Chinese government has incarcerated Uighur dissidents with little proof of actual involvement in violent acts.

Under international law, the only country that is clearly obliged to accept a person’s entry is that person’s country of citizenship. So while the U.S. could not return the Uighurs to China, it could not require any other country to take them either.

Instead, the U.S. had to wheedle: to appeal to other countries’ humanitarian inclinations. But this is an age of unwanted refugees and, more importantly, of growing Chinese power. Few countries are willing to risk alienating Beijing by granting asylum to the Uighurs as a group . Although the U.S. approached a whole host of countries — Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and others – none agreed to accept them.

Uighurs in Court

At the same time as the U.S. government was trying to negotiate the Uighurs’ resettlement, a case brought by two of the Uighurs was making its way through the federal courts. At issue in the case was whether the U.S. could hold the Uighurs indefinitely even after it found that they pose no threat to national security.

On the merits of their claim, District Judge James Robertson ruled unequivocally in favor of the Uighurs. “The detention of these petitioners has by now become indefinite,” said Robertson in an opinion issued in December 2005. “This indefinite imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay is unlawful.”

At a hearing prior to his ruling, Judge Robertson had suggested that he might order the Uighurs released temporarily into the United States. But his final ruling found, instead, that he lacked the legal authority to remedy the Uighurs’ plight. “The question,” he wrote, “is whether the law gives me the power to do what I believe justice requires. The answer, I believe, is no.”

Winning in principle but losing in practice, the Uighurs filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. It was a long-shot effort, given that the case was still pending in the lower courts, and in April the Supreme Court declined to consider the appeal. The case was due to be heard by a federal appellate court last Monday, but, just days in advance of the hearing, the two plaintiffs (and three others) were released to Albania.

The Albanian Solution?

While five Uighurs have left, ten other Uighurs cleared for release remain at Guantanamo. And the Uighurs are not the only detainees who cannot return home. There are three others — a Russian, an Algerian and an Egyptian — who have been found not to be “enemy combatants” yet who remain incarcerated.

Indeed, nearly 30 percent of the detainees at Guantanamo – about 141 men — have been cleared to leave, but still remain. For many, the U.S. government knows that conditions are unsuitable at home. Dozens of detainees have filed motions seeking advance notice of any transfer, seeking to challenge their return on the ground that they might face torture.

So what are the options for detainees who cannot return home? There is the Albanian solution - find a country that, for humanitarian or other reasons, is willing to give them a safe haven. But that may not work in every case.

More from Joanne Mariner

WIKIPEDIA: The Uyghur (also spelled Uygur, Uighur, Uigur; Uyghur: ئۇيغۇر; simplified Chinese: 维吾尔; traditional Chinese: 維吾爾; pinyin: Wéiwú’ěr) are a Turkic people of Central Asia. Today Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (also known by its controversial name East Turkistan or Uyghurstan).

There are Uyghur diasporic communities in Pakistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Germany and Turkey and a smaller one in Taoyuan County of Hunan province in south-central China.^[3]

Historically the term “Uyghur” was applied to a group of Turkic-speaking tribes that lived in the Altay Mountains. Along with the Göktürks (Kokturks) the Uyghurs were one of the largest and most enduring Turkic peoples living in Central Asia.

In modern usage, “Uyghur” refers to settled Turkic urban-dwellers and farmers of Kashgaria and Jungaria who follow traditional Central Asian practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia. The Bolsheviks reintroduced the term “Uyghur” to replace the previously used Turki. The Soviets first used “Uyghur” in 1921 during a meeting of Turkic leaders in Tashkent. This meeting established the Revolutionary Uyghur Union (Inqilawi Uyghur Itipaqi), a communist nationalist organization that opened underground sections in principal cities of Kashgaria and was active until 1926, when the Soviets recognized the Sinkiang Provincial Government and concluded trade agreements with it. Comintern’s structure included an Uyghur section. There is some evidence that Uyghur students and merchants living in Russia had already embraced the name prior to this date, drawing on Russian studies that claimed a linkage between the historical khanate and Xinjiang’s current inhabitants.

Today, Uyghurs live mainly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, where they are the largest ethnic group, together with Han Chinese, Hui, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Russians. Thousands of Uyghurs also live in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. “Xinjiang”, meaning “New Frontier”, is the official Chinese name of the Autonomous Region.

Orkhon Uyghur

Uyghur history can be divided into four distinct phases: Pre-Imperial (300 CE-630 CE), Imperial (630-840 CE), Idiqut (840-1209 CE), and Mongol (1209-1600 CE), with perhaps a fifth modern phase running from the death of the Silk Road in 1600 CE until the present. Uyghur history is the story of an obscure nomadic tribe from the Altai Mountains rising to challenge the Chinese Empire and ultimately becoming the diplomatic arm of the Mongol invasion.

Like Tibetans in Tibet, Uighurs have historically been the predominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, indigenous groups have chafed at the arrival of large numbers of Han Chinese, the country’s predominant ethnic group, who have migrated to western regions with strong government support.

Uighurs, like Tibetans, have complained that recent Han arrivals now dominate their local economies, even as the Han-run local governments insert themselves deeper into schools and religious practices to weed out cultural practices that officials fear might reinforce a separate ethnic or religious identity.

We, as Americans, have a lot to answer for. The Rule of Law that has made America an example for Democracy, has been made dirty by the Bush Administration. Cherry picking which laws suit him, and making up laws when none are available to meet his needs, this administration has dismantled America. Profit motive has gone far enough for the select few. There are too many disenfranchised as a result of Bush’s disgusting policies. The more he resurrects the 9/11 catastrophe as an excuse, the more I have doubts about the real origins of that day.

]]> http://communicatinglabourrights.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/us-recruiters-abuse-on-indian-migrants/ Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:55:51 +0000 vittorio longhi http://communicatinglabourrights.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/us-recruiters-abuse-on-indian-migrants/

By Ginger Gibson, Jatin Gandhi and Presley Thomas

The 120 workers who walked out of Signal International facilities in Mississippi last week rallied outside the office of the lawyer, who acted as a recruiter to bring them from India to the United States. “The reason we gave up our homes to come here was to get permanent residency,” said Vijaka Kumaran, 34. Kumaran sold his wife’s jewellery to get the $15,000 he was charged to go to the US.

The H2B workers complaint alleges that recruiters conspired with Signal to control the workers with “a broad scheme of psychological coercion, threats of serious harm and physical restraint, and threatened abuse of the legal process.”The workers attempted to present lawyer Malvern Burnett with a federal lawsuit filed in a district court in New Orleans that names two recruiters and Signal as defendants and accuses the companies of human trafficking.The 82-page complaint claims the defendants violated their rights besides violating nine federal laws. It claims they violated Trafficking Victims Protection Act by having both forced labour and trafficking. They also claim violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871, fraud, breach of contract, violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and false imprisonment, assault and batter and infliction of emotional harm.

In India, the government suspended licences of two Mumbai-based recruiting firms hiring Indian workers for Signal International, accused of ill-treating workers in Mississippi. Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi told Hindustan Times, “Licences of Dewan Consultants and S Mansur & Company have been suspended. The report of Indian ambassador in the US is expected in two days time”. The government move comes two days after the HT reported the inhuman living conditions of 120 Indian workers in a small town in Mississippi.

Besides Mumbai-based Dewan Consultants, another Mumbai-based recruiter, S Mansur & Company, was carrying out the recruitment process for Signal by allegedly charging $15,000 for a visa – a charge proprietor Syed Mansur Razvi denied. ” I am allowed to charge just Rs 10,000 for processing an application. The Ministry should have questioned me before suspending the licence,” Razvi said.

The Ministry has issued show-cause notices to both the firms, asking, “why action should not be taken against them for charging money from innocent people to illegally send them abroad to work in inhuman conditions and also for enticing them with the promise of green cards”, sources said.

The H2B workers complaint alleges that recruiters conspired with Signal to control the workers with “a broad scheme of psychological coercion, threats of serious harm and physical restraint, and threatened abuse of the legal process.”

The workers’ litigation team includes attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Louisiana Justice Institute. Tushar Sheth, an attorney working on the case from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the march was a “phenomenal demonstration of worker unity and worker strength.”

J Rosenbaum, an attorney from the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke with crowd, saying the plight of these workers would be represented by her organisation.

“We’re proud to stand with them in this litigation and their calls for investigations,” she said. (Hindustan Times)

iamconstance.org This is a site for people to share their stories of rape, human traffiking, child pornography, and everything in between. By showing the magnitude of these taboo atrocities, we can create real change. Through sharing our stories we can find hope, peace, and justice.

Naturalization paperwork jam hits Texas hard
Backlog may keep some from casting votes for president

WASHINGTON — Millions of people who applied for naturalization and other immigration benefits to beat a midsummer fee increase are caught in a paperwork pileup that threatens the chance for some to become U.S. citizens in time to vote in next November’s presidential election.

The application backlog is so large that Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Homeland Security Department, is months behind schedule in returning receipts for checks written to cover fees — an early step in the process.

The Texas Service Center is working on applications dating from July 26.

“Were we caught off guard by the volume? Let’s just say it was anticipated it would increase. It was not anticipated it would increase by that much,” said Emilio Gonzalez, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The immigration agency would not say how many applications it has received. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, a private legal advocacy group, said it was told by agency officials that 3.5 million applications had come in over a two-month period. The agency projected a workload of 3.2 million applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.

Gonzalez ordered his staff to give priority to naturalizations, but some applicants will miss voting in primaries, which begin in January.

“I really want to target the elections,” Gonzalez said. “I really want to get as many people out there to vote as possible.”

The application crush was worsened by another flood of about 300,000 applications from skilled workers wanting to become legal residents. The agency initially said it wouldn’t accept the visa applications but changed its mind amid public outrage.

The agency also set up hot lines and is posting progress updates on its Web site. Files are being sent to Vermont and California for processing there. The agency has asked staff members to volunteer to help clear the delayed paperwork, just as the State Department did when confronted with a passport application backlog because of a change in law requiring Americans to show a passport when flying to and from Mexico, Canada and the Bahamas.

At least 110 immigration workers are being sent to Texas and Nebraska to help process applications, the agency said.

WASHINGTON — Regardless who wins the White House next year, the issue of how to fix America’s dysfunctional immigration system will be waiting like a ticking time bomb in the new president’s inbox.

Find your candidate — which of the 17 presidential candidates most closely matches your own views on immigration? Find out with an interactive tool. DETAILS

The immigration issue is almost as emotional as the Middle East wars. There is blood letting on both issues. People are dying to get into the USA. People are dying to get out of the Middle East. Both issues cost too many Taxpayer dollars. Both issues are fraught with heartbreak. Both issues are a politician’s nightmare. Regardless who wins, somebody will loose votes. No single answer will solve either problem and inequity will be applied, no matter who wins.

The US economy is dependent on cheap labor, whether we accept it or not. There is a whole underground economy based on ‘un-reported cash income’. Both Americans and Illegals take advantage of this lifestyle. American crooks get rich off the backs of illegals. Scams and coercion fleece illegals so they have to work twice as hard to become legitimate citizens. Regardless of the hype everyone hears, the truth is that most working illegals pay more taxes than you do. They are at the mercy of scam tax preparers and hoodlums who coerce them into holding the bag for American con artists. They are too frightened to report awful things done to them. They don’t know who to trust. The majorities come here for a better life and to help their families back home … for that they sell themselves into a form of slavery that few Americans would tolerate. Americans have become intolerant and cynical watching these workers demean themselves for pennies on the dollar. Then there are the real criminals who take advantage of the easy flow of traffic between countries. Embedded among these desperate travelers they put everyone at risk. Foreign criminals traffic drugs, slaves and arms to their American Citizen counterparts. As long as there is a market, there will be providers. America is the biggest market of all! Immigration is a plate of spaghetti that will take a master to unravel. Americans must take a closer look. It is not just the weight on our humanitarian services that is suffering. It is our inability to distinguish one issue from another. America has lost its vision and is beholding to slick politicians to guide us through the quicksand we find ourselves in. Tax dollars should be spent on solutions, not fences. ARE WE OSTRICHES?

Reports of Forced Labor Unsettle China

Cheated out of their money when they sought to buy a ticket for the final leg of the journey home, their father, Su Jianjun, said in an interview, they were taken in by a woman who provided them with warm shelter and a meal on a cold winter night. She also offered them a chance to earn enough money to pay their fare by helping her sell fruit.

The next thing they knew, however, they were being loaded onto a minibus with several other children and taken to a factory in the next province, where they were pressed into service making bricks. Several days later, the boy, 16, escaped along with another boy and managed to reach home. A few days later, Mr. Su was able to rescue his daughter, 18.

This story and many others like it have swept China in recent days in an unfolding labor scandal in central China that involves the kidnapping of hundreds of children, most in their teens but some as young as 8.

The children, and many adults, reportedly, have been forced to work under brutal conditions — scantily clothed, unpaid and often fed little more than water and steamed buns — in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province.

 There is more to this article and many others that are appalling. 

Forced & child labour in Shanxi brickworks

Articles relating to the discovery of Shanxi brickworks holding workers in slave-like conditions, including children.

1. ‘Slaves’ rescued from China firm, Michael Bristow, BBC, 8 Jun 2007

2. 400 hundred children sold as ‘slaves’ to illegal brick works factories in Shanxi, China, Dahe.cn 06 Jun 2007

[Original article in Chinese. Title translation, and following summary of the article's key points, provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.]

Dahe.com published an open petition letter on June 6 from a group of 400 parents, striving to retrieve their lost sons, who had been captured as forced labourers in many notorious brick works factories in Shanxi, China. The children were lured or kidnapped at public locations in Zhengzhou, Henan Province such as train stations, bus stops and on the road side. They were each sold for around 500 yuan (about US$62) to work in the Shanxi brick factories, known as “dark factories”. When the parents visited the illegal brick factories in Linfen and Yongji cities of Shanxi, where most of the “dark factories” are located, they were stunned by what they found. The youngest of these children is aged 8. The children’s hair has not been cut for months or maybe years. Some have been held for over 7 years. Some has become disabled because of brutal beatings when caught trying to escape. Many have had their backs seriously burnt when they were forced to carry red-hot bricks on their backs. Slow or sick workers are beaten in order to ‘catch up with productivity’. Sick and injured workers are not hospitalized or even given any treatment.  All workers are held under round-the-clock surveillance by supervisors and guards.

Human trafficking and slavery is as rampant as it was in past centuries.  This is 2007! What have we learned?  Corporate complicity is driving this practice, cheap labor equals higher profits equals WalMart prices we all enjjoy …

Trafficking news monthly

Rights & Wrongs: Human Trafficking and More

Child Trafficking in Africa

Human Trafficking Thrives in Democratically Deficient Nations

So, we talk about all this until we are blue in the face.  We become numb and easily distracted by ‘fluff’ news media shouting about: Paris Hilton, Dancing With Stars, Rosie’s future, Obama’s latest fauxpaux,  Vioxx,  anti-aging medication and the price of gasoline.

We don’t recognize the connection between our personal actions (in-actions) and their impact upon the rest of the world.  That’s why voters bought the famous Bush line, “they hate us for our freedom”.  They hate us for our clueless abuse and disregard for anyone other than ourselves.  The poorest among us have more opportunities than much of the world.  Can you spell TV or Beer?  Such a “Christian” nation we are …

We are what we do, Not what we say!

Allies Cited for Human Trafficking

State Dept. Adds Arab Nations to List of Worst Offenders

By Nora Boustany

Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 13, 2007; Page A14

The State Department yesterday added seven countries, including four Arab allies, to its list of worst offenders in failing to suppress human trafficking and forced labor, which it called “a modern day form of slavery.”

The 236-page annual survey, now in its seventh year, added Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar to its blacklist of worst offenders, along with Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Malaysia. Countries on the list are subject to sanctions until major reforms are introduced.

The list already included Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. Laos, Belize and Zimbabwe were dropped from the list this year.

The world’s two most populous countries, China and India, were kept on an intermediate watch list, meaning their approach to trafficking is deemed deficient but not enough to face immediate U.S. sanctions.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who sponsored the law that requires the report, contended that this year’s survey was too soft on China and India. In his view, they should have been placed on the list of worst offenders.

Ths USA spouts grand “Moral Values” to everyone on the planet. The flip side is that the USA lies through it’s teeth! The USA still has a foreign policy of “DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO, AND I WON’T LOOK IF YOU BREAK THE RULES …”

Human trafficking undermines any pretension that a country is democratic, Lagon said. “If people are treated as if they are subhuman and can be enslaved, the government is not fully living up to its democratic principles,” he said.

Disappointed? Always!

They say we are a Christian Nation … Think Again!