Maid to Order: Modern-day Slavery in the USA

Article printed in Colorlines 2001

The day Tigris (names have been changed) decided to escape from her abusive employment situation coincided with a bomb scare at the children’s school. The bus driver brought her employer’s children back home at 10 am, a time she was not required to work as a nanny. The kids, finding themselves alone, called the Virginia police. After a manhunt, Tigris was arrested and charged with two felony counts of child abuse and grand larceny.

The police record does not mention that Tigris, who was held for 3 weeks on $20,000 bail, was paid only $100 a week for around-the-clock chores as a live-in maid because her employer claimed “that was enough money for a black person.” Nowhere does it mention that the man of the house attempted to fondle and kiss her on various occasions. Or that the woman of the house forced her to cut her hair, stop wearing make-up and threatened to kill Tigris if she had sex with her husband. Even though she legally came to the US on a domestic worker visa program, if convicted, Tigris will be deported to her home country in Eastern Africa, where she is fleeing political persecution.

Involuntary Servitude

Tigris is just one of a growing number of superexploited domestic workers. Each year, thousands enter the United States on special visas to work for diplomats and international bureaucrats who feel their lifestyle can only be sustained with the assistance of a live-in domestic. Most of these domestic workers—who are overwhelmingly female—come from underdeveloped countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

In many cases, the employment contract signed by the employer and worker and filed at a U.S. Embassy abroad is ignored or replaced with a new contract stipulating longer hours and less pay. Typically, once the woman has passed through Customs at the airport, the employer illegally confiscates her passport and other documents, making her totally beholden to the whims of the employer. (Tigris’s passport and visa had been taken by her employer, and when she “stole” her belongings back her employers retaliated by accusing her of stealing a piece of jewelry, a claim that is often wielded against runaway domestic workers).

Although all workers, both documented and undocumented, are protected by U.S. labor laws, it is not uncommon to hear reports of domestic workers being paid 50 cents or a dollar an hour or, in some cases, not at all. Many women are forced into dawn-to-midnight work schedules, six to seven days a week. They are often told that they may not make friends, use the phone, or leave the house unescorted. With more egregious cases, physical, mental, verbal and sexual abuse has been reported. One domestic worker was called “the creature,” another said she was forced to wear a dog collar, and yet another was forced to kneel down and kiss her employer's feet.

While employers sometimes use the threat of violence to ensure that domestic workers stay in abusive work situations, psychological coercion is also used. In a recent case, Hilda Rosa Dos Santos, a housekeeper from Brazil, was trapped with no pay and insufficient food for 20 years in the home of a Brazilian couple who told her that she would be raped or killed if she went outside because Americans don’t like dark-skinned people. While employers often invoke race to deter domestic workers from leaving, they also exploit cultural and religious differences. An Indonesian maid was told by her Saudi Arabian boss that Americans don’t like Muslims so she would not fare well if she left the home. Often times, abusive employers point to violence on television to bolster their claim about the dangers of the United States. These women--many of whom do not speak English and are unfamiliar with American culture and laws--live as prisoners in the homes they clean with few safeguards and little protection.

Typically, if the domestic worker complains about her work conditions, her employer threatens to send her home or call the police or INS. Ironically, because the domestic worker is in the U.S. on an employment-based visa, the moment she runs away from her employer, she is immediately considered “out of status,” ineligible for other employment and liable for deportation. As one neighbor who helped a Haitian domestic worker escape said, “When she ran away, she was out of a job, out of money, out of a home, out of status and, quite frankly, out of her mind” with fear.

Visas for Third World Servants

Nearly 4,000 special visas are issued annually: A-3 visas for household employees of diplomats, and G-5 visas for employees of international agencies such as the United Nations, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As part of a larger visa category for businesspeople, foreign nationals and American citizens with permanent residency abroad are also able to import housekeepers, nannies, cooks, drivers, and gardeners on B-1 visas.

The location of G-5, A-3, and B-1 workers remains a well-kept secret, making them some of the most vulnerable and easily exploited sectors of the American workforce. For example, the U.S. State Department keeps no record of B-1 domestic workers. The lack of record-keeping also makes it impossible to know how many B-1s are currently in the U.S. and, more importantly, how much of this invisible workforce is suffering in silence. Although the U.S. government and the institutions involved (IMF, World Bank, UN) keep records of whereabouts of A-3 and G-5 domestic workers, this information is kept confidential, citing the privacy of the employer.

The Comparison: Visa for White Nannies

Interestingly, the J-1 visa, a Congress-sponsored visa program for nannies or au pairs, also brings migrant workers to the US, but under very different circumstances.

The au pair program – which means “an equal” in French – largely recruits young, middle-class women from Europe for “educational and cultural exchange.” Each nanny is flown to New York for an orientation session and is placed in geographical groups with other nannies so they can form a network of friendships. Once the nanny joins a family, she attends another orientation program where she receives information on community resources, educational opportunities and contacts for a local support network. Each month, both the nanny and her employers are required to discuss their situation with a counselor to report any problems and resolve disputes.

In contrast, with the G-5, A-1, and B-1 domestic worker programs, there are no official orientations, no information, no contract numbers, no counselors, and no educational programs. In practice, as well, there is often no freedom--many are systematically (though illegally) forbidden from contacting the outside world.

Clean Home With Justice

Over the years, the problems faced by this hidden workforce have surfaced periodically with high profile, yet short-lived, media blitzes. But until recently, few groups were organizing to foster systemic changes in the domestic worker community, both at the grassroots and policy levels.

Today, dynamic groups such as Mujeres Unidas de Maryland (United Women of Tigrisland), are forming workplace cooperatives to advocate for improved work conditions for all workers. This cooperative originally began in 1999 as part of the Promoters’ Rights Project, affiliated with CASA de Maryland, Inc. Former and current domestic workers--armed with legal information in Spanish--took to the streets, parks, buses, and churches looking for potentially abused domestic workers and educating them about their rights. If they encountered an exploited employee, they would direct her or him to bilingual legal assistance in order to recover back wages. Eventually, the workers formed a 24-member, democratically controlled cleaning cooperative with the goal of providing dignified day jobs and equitable work conditions. Most impressively, 10 percent of all proceeds made through the cleaning service are funneled to support social justice organizations.

Silvia Navas, a domestic worker and one of the organizers of the cooperative, says “having a small business where you are doing something for yourself and for someone else builds self-esteem, self-confidence in the business, and in your value as a person.” By offering a “clean home with justice,” Mujeres Unidas de Maryland epitomizes the positive possibilities of community-based initiatives.

While most members of Mujeres Unidas are Latina, other ethnically based organizations in the Washington DC-area are also exploring creative tactics to tackle domestic worker abuse, such as Shared Communities (Filipina) and the Ethiopian Community Development Council. More than 25 DC-based organizations have banded together to create the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights, which seeks to change public policy and strengthen the safety net available to G-5, A-3 and B-1 domestic workers. Nationally, Freedom Network (USA) To Empower Enslaved and Trafficked Persons formed in response to the rising incidents of trafficking and slavery in the sex and labor industries. Although the Freedom Network currently operates without a budget, it is attempting to form a rapid-response team to react quickly to reports of abuse and slavery in various geographical locations in the U.S. The Network hopes to ensure that every enslaved and trafficked person is able to enforce their legal and human rights and have access to linguistically-appropriate, culturally-sensitive, victim-center social, health and legal services. They would also like to increase public and official awareness around modern-day slavery.

Workers rights clinics in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and New York serve as the first stop on the “underground railroad” for individuals escaping slave-like conditions. After Tigris left her abusive employer, she depended on good Samaritans of the public, and organizations like the Ethiopian Community Development Council, the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for legal, financial, moral, and political support. She is currently out on bail, telling the story that she and thousands of others like her have endured in the “land of the free.”