3
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2023
3 points (100.0% liked)
chapotraphouse
13547 readers
634 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Gossip posts go in c/gossip. Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from c/gossip
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ok but "human trafficking" is a bit of a stretch. It seems he was charged with and convicted of "alien smuggling" The crucial difference is, I think, that in this case it was ostensibly consensual. Seasonal workers making minimum wage at resorts and being charged absurd amounts for fraudulent visas by the smugglers? horribly exploitative and clearly illegal, but it's not exactly slavery. one of the documents says that most of the laborers had tickets to return home, and it was essentially a financial decision.
I don't mean to minimize him systematically exploiting desperate people, he's clearly a massive scumbag. I just wanted to point out that it seems like the core crime here was visa fraud. As for the rest of it, and having read the witness testimony linked, this just sounds like common domestic business practices. These are all things that american contracting companies already do with American citizens, and I've experienced it. The company putting workers up in crappy apartments where you have to share a room with multiple other people? Check. The middleman company charging you a fee for the gig, as a coercive mechanism, so if you bail you're on the hook for a large lump sum? Check. Shit wages and regular labor violations? Check.
Yes, this is illegal, but when has the US given two shits about labor violations? It's still incredibly profitable for such contracting companies. In my case, I was able to sue the company afterwards, over the shittons of unpaid overtime, and after prolonged legal efforts, and the lawyers getting half the settlement, I got some compensation. But that was just the amount that they were supposed to have paid me for overtime. Forget about the illegal financial coercion and the problem with your boss being your landlord, because companies don't face consequences for that. And at the end of the day, they paid me roughly half of what they were getting from the corporate client, so it was still profitable for them and it continues to be their business model.
I'm an immigrant but most of my coworkers were born and raised in the US. So if this is how Americans are exploited by American companies, I imagine much worse is happening to illegal immigrants, who essentially have no legal recourse.
EDIT: just realized this was a video post lmao. to be clear, I did not watch the video and this was just based on the documents linked.
he visa scammed people and kept them in jobs and docked their pay, that is definitely not consensual. he was facing 65 years in prison, mysteriously got 41 months, got all his confiscated stuff back, and suddenly became a left wing "activist". seems like he became an FBI informant after accepting a plea deal, hence the absurd amount of leniency from the "justice" system
watch
Yeah I was thinking the same before I watched the video too. The lawsuit did not charge some crimes they could have, and instead focused on visa fraud and what the government calls human trafficking -- which in this case essentially meant people got in without the right visas.
Getting people into your country is actually based, so I don't give much credibility to what the government considers to be trafficking in this instance.
However, from the video, it seems King and his cohorts used threats to keep the people working for them, and made them pay absurd amounts of money for the visas and such. I know US visas are expensive, but BadEmpenada looked it up and such a work visa costs around 200$ and not the 1500 they were charging the workers.
because they planned on using him as a fake activist snitch
This happened afterwards, e.g. they seized his properties and then gave them back to him for no reason while he was in prison, which happened after sentencing.
Possibly the prosecution was in on it but I think what's more likely is they wanted to stick to the charges they could easily prove in court. This is common in the US from what I understand, and when he was facing 60 years already and is white, they probably didn't care to try and add a smaller charge on top of that.
no. watch the video. when a convict has their confiscated properties given back to them, the court usually documents the reason for doing so. Not only is it unusual, but the court kept their reasons for doing so confidential. Making the whole thing far more suspicious than usual.
65 years dialed down to 3.4 years + confiscated property returned for deliberately classified reasons + immediately become a left wing "activist" with opinions suspiciously in line with US foreign policy immediately upon leaving prison = SUPER SUSPICIOUS
Yeah the US's definition of human trafficking is...not good. Like if this was on a much larger scale, it wouldn't even be illegal. JP Morgan Chase hiring thousands of visa workers and paying each one $10k/year less than comparable American-born employees? That's just the system working.
And that $10k reduction in pay is essentially the result of them holding deportation over your head. If the threats are made via boilerplate contracts then it's good and legal.
I think to most people human trafficking implies something like the slave trade. But in legal parlance it's literally as small as getting someone into the country with the wrong visa.
If you hire someone and request say a tourist visa for them instead of a work visa, you could be guilty of human trafficking and visa fraud. And I'm no fed or snitch, what do I care about visa types.
Marrying someone so they can get a passport for example, if both people consent to it, is based.