This International Women’s Day: When the Law Fails Immigrant Working Women
Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 6:35PM
By Rachel Queirolo, BTCC Project Assistant
This International Women’s Day is a blog series featuring the opinions of BTCC advocacy interns and staff related to women’s rights in the US and around the world.
Her back sore and twisted from sleeping on the cold closet floor, V.M. awakes to cleaning the 34-room mansion that she is bound to, cooking, and caring for 6 children. Her hard work is rewarded with 87 cents an hour as she labors 17 hours a day, every single day for the past six years of her life. Most Americans are accustomed to a 40-50 and for the more ambitious, 60-70 hour work week. V.M. endures a 119 hour work week. Her identity consumed and her dignity devastated, V.M. has been transformed from a courageous woman seeking some semblance of a better life in the U.S. that her native India could not offer her, into a domestic slave.
Today, there are 27 million slaves silently suffering throughout the world. According to the State Department there are approximately 16,000 new cases of slavery in the U.S. every year. The Department of Justice acknowledges that of the 16,000 U.S. cases, 25 percent of the slaves are domestic workers. While many domestic servants and modern-day slaves are viciously tortured and abused, the shackles of immigration laws and the grave shortcomings of labor protections and rights further harm women even after they escape.
While in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act granted unionization, safety standards, minimum wage, and collective bargaing to most workers, the Act also purposefully barred domestic and agricultural work from these crucial worker protections. Many lawmakers and scholars have attributed this explicit exclusion to race, as the vast majority of domestic workers are Latina, Black, Asian, and foreign-born women. Only in 2010, did the U.S. introduce the first legal act to safeguard domestic workers with the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
Amnesty International and Anti-Slavery International presented a nearly 200 page report denouncing the British government for being more concerned with the stringent legal immigration statuses of survivors than with the crimes committed against them.
Somehow in the confusion and formalities of the immigration legal rhetoric and debate, regulations, codes, and terms seem to triumph over the human spirit and one’s most fundamental of human rights. We must not let the nuances of immigration law overshadow the basic dignity and freedom of women throughout world. On the path where domestic workers, modern-day slavery, and immigration law meet, there is no simple black and white resolution. At Domestic workers health Center, we are navigating those systems and invite you to comment and join us on this journey.
If you’re interested in the issues facing immigrant domestic workers who have faced trafficking and exploitation, here are a few links to check out:
www.webelongtogether.org
www.caringacrossgenerations.org
www.freedomnetworkusa.org
Reader Comments (1)
<p>Michael Kors Outlets </p>
<p>Michael Kors Online Store </p>