Indian workers in US begin Satyagraha
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SPECIALCORRESPONDENT
The Indian workers who quit their jobs and filed a lawsuit against the company they were working for in the United States have launched a Satyagraha movement.
They have started a march for justice - from New Orleans to Washington DC where they want to meet the Indian Ambassador to the US.On March 12, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi launched the Dandi march and almost 80 years later, in the United States, with Gandhi's name on their lips, the former employees of Signal International company begin their march for justice.
The Indian workers say they paid lakhs of rupees to a recruitment firm on promises of work-based permanent residency in the US. But on arrival, all they got was 10-month H2B guest worker visas, low wages and cramped quarters.
The workers got a letter from the Indian consulate in Washington DC saying the Ambassador's doors were always open, but there was no mention of a time or date for an appointment.
''The Indian government has given us a passport but their responsibility does not end there. We are going through all this hardship to send money back home. How much of India's development takes place due to NRI remittances? The government does not care for us,'' said Paul Konnar, former Signal employee.
With no legal status or money, and most of them unable to even speak English, the workers say they have no choice but to march to the capital - mostly by foot - to force the Ambassador to address their plight.
Human trafficking
While the US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into their charges of human trafficking, the workers have also filed a lawsuit against the traffickers.
''No person in the United States of America should ever feel like they are bonded to their employer that they have to escape to find their freedom. This is not what we stand for,'' said Tracie Washington, Lawyer for Indian workers.
Approximately 66,000 H-2B visas are issued every year. On paper, H-2B workers are supposed to have the same rights as Americans but Human Rights groups charge that many foreign workers are exploited.
''Unfortunately Signal is not just a bad apple in the basket. Unfortunately, abuses are routine in the federal guest worker program in the United States,'' said Saket Soni, New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice.
The Indian workers' struggle for justice comes 40 years after the Rev Martin Luther King, Jr, marched with striking Memphis sanitation workers carrying the same signs.
Their march has yet again exposed the vulnerability of guest workers to exploitation in their search for a better future in foreign lands.
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