 NEWS BYTES
A man and woman have pled guilty to smuggling Chinese and Thai women into the US and forcing them to work as prostitutes until they paid back a ,000 smuggling debt. The two are the first of seven people charged in a Houston-area smuggling ring to be sentenced. According to officials, the women were often physically restrained to prevent them from leaving, and even when they were not so restrained, they were threatened with repercussions if they tried to escape. Despite the claims of officials, an attorney who represents the woman who pled guilty says that they were not taken advantage of, and that most of the women viewed the scheme as an opportunity to escape poverty in their home country. The Houston INS office estimates that the ring smuggled 30 women into the US each month over the past two years.
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Four workers have filed a class action lawsuit against a Maine poultry-packing plant saying that they are required to perform work for which they are not paid. According to the suit, Barber Foods does not pay workers for the time they spend accessing safety equipment at the beginning of each shift and then storing it at the end of shifts. The suit also says that the company takes advantage of the fact that 44 percent of its work force is foreign born, with many lacking the English skills necessary to understand their rights. Each of the four named plaintiffs in the suit is an immigrant. Barber says it tries to treat all its workers fairly, and is investigating the claims.
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A Thai boy who was rented by his mother to a couple trying to sneak into the US has undergone a remarkable transformation in the eight months he has been in the US. Phanupong Khaisri, who is infected with HIV, was placed in INS custody after the smuggling attempt was discovered. He was ill at the time, and Thai community activists rallied to prevent him from being sent back to Thailand. He was placed in the care of an activist after an Immigration Judge ruled that he should not be returned to Thailand – his father had committed suicide and his mother, who rented him for 0, is a prostitute and drug addict. Since then, the boy has begun learning English, gained weight and is no longer plagued by the nightmares he suffered after first arriving in the US. There is still an asylum application pending on Phanupong’s behalf. Also, activists are looking into the possibility of putting him up for adoption in the US, which would eliminate the need for asylum.
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Police in Washington State recently discovered the body of Anastasia Soloveva King, a mail-order bride from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgystan. The 20-year-old first went missing last September after she and her husband returned from a trip to Kyrgystan. Her husband, Indle G. King, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder. King’s death, tragically, did not shock her co-workers, nor did the news that her husband was suspected in the case. She had been complaining about her relationship with her husband, who had filed for divorce last August.
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Over the past year, Buffalo, New York, has seen thousands of people come through the city on their way to seek asylum in Canada. More that 4,200 people have stayed at Vive La Casa, a refugee shelter in Buffalo. Canadian immigration officials say that the number of people applying for asylum at ports of entry along the St. Lawrence River has quadrupled this year, from around 1,500 to nearly 6,000.
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American Immigration Control, a group that favors reduced immigration, has mailed out 200,000 surveys to people across the country. The immigration impact survey makes no attempt to disguise its anti-immigrant slant, asking whether those surveyed favored allowing noncitizens to collect billion in welfare and taking jobs worth 3 billion from US-born residents. Government officials in Utah, where many residents have received the survey, have called it shocking, and have urged people to not respond to it. A spokesperson for American Immigration Control says that the survey was not meant to be mean-spirited.
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A Russian national was sentenced to 10 months in prison for conspiracy to commit fraud while employed by the US Consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia. Igor Galitskiy was found guilty last September, and has already served eight months in prison. He will face deportation proceedings after completing his prison term.
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Eight undocumented immigrants were arrested in Vermont on charges of making fraudulent documents. The men, from Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador, were employed as carpenters. They were arrested after police and Border Patrol agents stopped two vans they were riding in and all of them were revealed to lack proper documents.
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A woman who was called for jury duty in Broward County, Florida, said during the initial questioning that she did not speak English. The judge ruled that Awilda Rossiello was lying, and sentenced her to six months probation. Not being able to speak English is a valid reason for being excused from jury duty. When Rossiello said she could not speak English, the judge had her questioned by a translator. She said that she came to Florida from Puerto Rico almost 20 years ago, and until recently had worked in a day care center. These answers, plus a conversation with people at the day care center, convinced the judge that Rossiello was lying. The manager of the day care center said that he did get a call asking whether Rossiello could speak English. He says that he said yes, and the caller immediately hung up. In an interview after the incident, he said that Rossiello does not speak English fluently.
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An administrative judge has found that managers at the Smithfield Packing Company in North Carolina, the world’s largest pork processing plant, committed “egregious and pervasive” violations of US labor law during two separate efforts by workers to unionize. Eleven workers were fired because of union activities, and the judge ruled that they must be rehired and given back pay. Other workers were threatened with dismissal, and the plant’s many Hispanic employees were threatened with deportation. The company plans to appeal the ruling to the National Labor Relations Board.
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News that Tom Alciere, a newly elected state representative in New Hampshire, made statements on the Internet that some police officers deserve to be shot while in the line of duty shocked most who heard it. Apparently, police officers are not the only targets of his anger. Alciere’s wife is from the Dominican Republic, and there were substantial delays in the process of getting her a visa to come to the US, delays which seem to have caused him to hate the INS. While many people are frustrated with their dealings with the INS, few are so out of control that they would make statements Alciere made in a letter to the editor following the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa. According to Alciere “Clearly, the US State Department deserved what it got elsewhere. Maybe a 100 kg chunk of concrete wall will get through these jerks' heads. Just pick the wrong person to tell that their spouse cannot join them in the USA, wreck their marriage with delays, or rule that their ailing mother cannot go for medical treatment available only in the USA, and see how long the building stands.”
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