EASY PREY: EXPLOITING IMMIGRANTS
Day Two
January 13, 1997|DON LEE | TIMES STAFF WRITER
He was farming rice in a poor village in Thailand when recruiters came calling with a tempting offer: Work overseas and send your family hundreds of dollars a month.
The 48-year-old man, who asked that he be identified by a nickname, Suriyak, paid the recruiters about $6,000–roughly six years’ income–with a loan obtained by deeding his small family land.
Three months later, Suriyak arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where he was met by a Thai garment shop owner and whisked away in a white van to downtown Los Angeles. There was no small talk, no fond recollections of home, though the owner, a longtime U.S. resident, came from Suriyak’s hamlet.
The next morning, having slept on the bare floor in the windowless upper level of the factory, Suriyak arose to find a pile of fabric awaiting him. Some two years have passed, but Suriyak has sent precious few dollars back home, his below-minimum wages barely covering his living expenses and medical bills from his deteriorating health.
“I was fooled,” he said recently through an interpreter. “I thought I was going to work in a legitimate factory, not a sweatshop. If I knew it would be like this, I would not have come.”
Suriyak is one of thousands of indentured immigrants from Asia and Latin America who are trapped in sweatshops, restaurants, bars and brothels. For them, the exploitation started in their homelands, lured by recruiters linked to a network of smugglers and unscrupulous employers abroad.
Most of them are undocumented workers, and contrary to the belief that illegal immigrants are border jumpers, they entered legally through airports with the intention of overstaying their tourist visas. Some knew what the kinds of jobs they were getting into, but many were tricked.
“It is a pervasive problem,” said David Lavine, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. In the worst cases, he said, women are “being duped into thinking they will be living the American dream in essence, only to find that they are stuck in a life of prostitution until they can pay off their debts,” which often run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Immigration and Naturalization Service agents say the smuggling of Asian immigrants is a growing problem. Jorge Guzman, a supervisor at INS’ anti-smuggling unit in Los Angeles, says thousands of mainland Chinese every month are obtaining visas fraudulently to come to the U.S.
Typically, he said, smugglers in the U.S. set up phony companies here, then send invitations for symposiums and other made-up events so people can obtain visas. They arrive in groups of a dozen or more and then disappear into a nether world of sweatshops and brothels. Smuggling fees, Guzman said, can run anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000.
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One of the most fertile grounds for recruiters is Thailand, where poverty, low education levels and cultural traditions make workers particularly vulnerable.
The El Monte incident, where 72 Thai nationals were held in a garment compound in slave-like conditions, was an extreme example. But experts say debts bind hundreds, if not thousands, of workers to restaurants, bars and other businesses in the Southland’s Thai community.
Chancee Martorell, director of the Thai Community Development Center, who has worked extensively with immigrants, says debt bondage is a serious problem in the Southland’s Thai community, where she estimates 25% of the immigrants are undocumented.
About 76,000 Thai immigrants reside in California, according to 1996 Census Bureau estimates, and many are in North Hollywood and other Los Angeles areas close to Buddhist temples.
The Buddhist notion of fatalism and an abiding sense of obligation in Thailand’s rigid hierarchical society combine to make uneducated Thais perfect victims–silent and resigned to their lot.
“In the patron-client relationship, Thai workers are beholden to their employer,” Martorell said. The recruiters, she said, “know these people are very desperate and vulnerable.”
And among the most vulnerable are young women from remote villages in Thailand, who are being duped into prostitution. Immigration officials estimate that at least 100 Thai women are being smuggled into the West Coast every month for the purpose of prostitution. Most were not prostitutes in their homeland.
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For the most part, these smugglers and brothel operators have eluded authorities, who say the women forced into prostitution are frequently moved around. But recently, a couple of cases have come to light.
Raids last year uncovered two residences in Westminster that were brothels where Thai women were working to pay off debts. One of the people found during the raids, a 24-year-old woman who sought anonymity because of fears of retribution, said she had just lost her husband to a car accident when recruiters came into her remote village in Thailand.
The woman, who has a grade school education and no skills, said she was told she would work as a maid overseas. She accepted, and accompanied by a “horse,” as companions for recruits are called, she journeyed to Bangkok, where within a week her immigration papers were prepared. About a year ago, she was smuggled into the U.S. and taken to a brothel in Westminster.
The Thai women were imposed smuggling fees of $40,000 each, which they owed to a variety of people.
Tom Reckleff, a Westminster police detective who took part in the raid last spring, said the women forced into prostitution were not technically held against their will. But they were like prisoners nonetheless, he said, for they did not have immigration papers, knew no one and spoke no English.
“Where would they have gone?” he asked.
