An Amazing Story
On Wednesday of last week, a former grad student was in touch with some friends from Russia. Their summer job lined up in the U.S. had fallen through, but they had received a call from a guy who told them to take a bus from D.C. to New York – to meet him at a club at midnight to get jobs as hostesses.
Any alarms going off yet? Luckily for these two Russian girls, their friend did suspect something fishy – and even from a road trip through Wyoming, he called upon help at Metafilter to work on preventing what sounded like a textbook case of human trafficking.
The full thread of what happened is here. It’s pretty long, but a breathless read if you have the time. There’s a good summary from Mother Jones magazine, and it may still be unfolding as the authorities did get involved.
It blows my mind that even rational people in reach of good technology, transportation and friends can be lured into this trap. Slavery is more rampant now than it was 300 years ago, it is just couched in more convoluted terms of owing money for room and board, or being “taken care of” instead of being a burden to the family. From wikipedia,
“The organization Anti-Slavery International defines slavery as “forced labour.” By this definition there are approximately 27 million slaves in the world today, more than at any point in history and more than twice as many as all African slaves who survived being taken to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade.”
It is relieving to see how in this case how many strangers worked together so quickly (over a 24 hour period, practically) to keep these girls from falling into a bad, bad situation. And knowing both what this looks like (job offers fall through, then once the targets arrive in the U.S., a meeting is set for a job that doesn’t seem like something that would need to recruit employees from abroad); and who are some helpful sources (Polaris Project is recommended here) is information I’m glad to pass along.
6 comments Sunday 23 May 2010 | m. | Announcements, Lovely Links
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Excellent points, Insurgent! J Schakowsky [D, IL] missed the boat. With her hatred of choice and her blatantly anti-American mindset, she could have been b os perfect health care czar. Is the water supply in Illinois so contaminated that its impossible to be a functional public servant? Whatever it is, she and b o do manifest the symptoms. I never would have believed it could be so easy to get no-talent, minimum-wage hired help from Illinois.
hehe your article makes remember me of hilarious thing my friend got involved in, she stepped on to soaked hanckerchief, yelled “homoo” and fell… + food tray flew to plouse of nearby stander, this happened at our work lol…\r\n\r\nAnyways story short, you have written very nice post, makes me crack a smile.
CD,You new Picturenoser, you made me fall off my chair by suggesting that Billy Liar and Escape to Victory are better than Citizen Kane. I mean, Billy Liar is more a documentary than anything else, as we all know that Northerners are miserable all the time, while Escape to Victory is to film what Cambridge United playing Peterborough United on a cold and wet November evening are to football
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