Dollar dreams turn sour for 500 Indians in US ‘

Recruiters Deny Promising Green Cards Or Permanent Homes To Indian Labourers In Mississippi

Washington: Some 500 Indian workers caught in what they claim is a human trafficking racket have asked the Indian government to protect their families in India from vengeful recruiters even as they filed a class action anti-racketeering lawsuit in the US against their American employer.

The workers, at the center of human traffic storm in Mississippi and Louisiana, received a surprise telephone call from Minister for NRI Affairs Vayalar Ravi on Sunday as they held a meeting of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity in New Orleans. They said the minister promised his support for their effort to break up what they say is a human trafficking racket by a major US company and US and Indian recruiters.

While the workers sought a meeting with the Indian ambassador in Washington DC to explain their case, the Embassy has already directed the consulate in Houston to investigate the matter. Meantime, the workers also sought the ministers intervention in preventing the recruiting company in Mumbai which sent them to the US under false assurances from intimidating their families in India following the flap.

The case involving the Indian workers and their alleged exploitation is more than a year old.” Sometime in 2006, hundreds of welders and pipefitters, mostly from Kerala, responded to a series of advertisement placed by a recruiting company run by Mumbai-based Sachin Dewan promising green cards and permanent residency in the United States stemming from job opportunities. Over 600 workers from all around India and some from the Gulf paid Dewan up to Rs 10 lakh (about $ 25,000 in today’s rates), often selling their homes and raising loans, for the promised American dream.’’

When they arrived in the United States, they discovered that there were no green cards. Instead, the workers found themselves working for Signal International, a major marine construction company, on ten-month “H-2B’’ visa that bonded them to work for Signal. Most of the work stemmed from the post-Hurricane Katrina labour shortage in the Louisiana-Mississippi region.

The workers, many of them sent to Pascagoula, Mississippi, say they found the living conditions horrible. They were placed in cramped quarters, 24 to a 24×36 room equipped with bunk beds. They were given substandard food, for which Signal charged them $ 1050 per month, although the company claimed to have hired an Indian cook from New Orleans.

“Welding and pipe-fitting are high stress jobs. We could not even have a decent night’s sleep before undertaking these dangerous jobs,’’ said Sabulal Vijayan, a former Signal worker who first began organising his colleagues for a protest last March told media.

Vijayan, who was subsequently fired by Signal, is now on a special extended visa to help US authorities investigating the case with help from the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice. Vijayan says when Signal and recruiter Sachin Dewan saw workers organising they threatened him with deportation and began retaliating against the dissidents. In one incident, the company sent in armed guards to apprehend the protectors in a predawn raid, as a result of which he says he attempted suicide by cutting his own wrists. “I was desperate…I was ready to die,’’ he says.

Signal, on its part, denies all charges and say the company has gone out of its way to make the workers comfortable, spending up to $ 7 million to build plush new housing facilities.

The living condition has been inspected by local authorities and found to be adequate (dissenting workers say the company dressed up the living quarters before the inspections). The company also denies it has anything to do with promising green cards or permanent residency to the workers, who typically come under the H2B guest worker visa. The workers allege that Signal was fully aware of Sachin Dewans misleading ads and that company representatives worked closely with Dewan in the recruitment process.

The case eventually attracted the attention of local rights activists, including Saket Soni and Stephen Boykewich, who began to counsel the workers. Amid growing local media attention, more than 100 workers last week escaped the Signal “labour camps’’ where they had been housed and demanded that the US Department of Justice prosecute the traffickers. In a demonstration that local TV stations aired, they threw their hard hats en masse at the gates of the company.

The workers say Signal continues to recruit fresh Indian workers through a new Mumbai recruiter S.Mansur & Company, who they suspect is a front for Sachin Dewan. They are now demanding that the Indian and US governments put an immediate halt to this international trafficking ring.

“We hope Minister Ravi’s commitments will be the first step by the Indian government in pressuring the United States to bring these labour traffickers to justice,’’ said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.

Meanwhile, the workers, acting under the aegis of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, filed a lawsuit in federal court in New Orleans late Friday against Signal, which is a sub-contractor for Northrup Grumman. The 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.’’

“For more than one year, hundreds of Indian workers at Signal International have been living like slaves. We paid $15,000 to $20,000 to come here because we were promised green cards and permanent residency, but they lied and gave us 10-month guest worker visas instead,’’ Sabulal Vijayan told the media on Thursday. “Signal knew about our debt, and exploited us.’’