6 ms·

We have a Filipino woman who works for us. She has been a citizen here for 25 years and has worked for us for 12. Her sister went to Qatar 15 years ago and has

by newmac 4y ago

We have a Filipino woman who works for us. She has been a citizen here for 25 years and has worked for us for 12. Her sister went to Qatar 15 years ago and has been miserable. We have just finished preparing a sponsorship for her in our country and now need to extract her. It involves having a replacement passport printed for her in the Philippines, her brother flying to Qatar under his Canadian passport and then bussing her to a neighbouring country to fly out of.

ianai 4y ago
I hope she makes it out safely. Both of them.
xpWr7r1ZeX 4y ago
Does she need the entry visa stamp on the new passport to exit? Or able to get the old passport from her current employers
- newmac 4y ago
  She cannot get her old passport. If her "employers" know she is leaving, they will stop it. I won't post about how we plan to get her out but I believe it is a good one and it has very littler risk to her or their brother. Perhaps when it is all done will feel ok posting more. It is costing us a lot of money in the end, but the woman we employ is part of the family at this point and it's important to us that her sister is safe. We will employ the sister on her landing in our country and will do so for at least a year.
lawgimenez 4y ago
As a Filipino, I have heard so many stories of abuse not just in Arab countries but also in Hong Kong and Singapore. edit: I'm almost 40 now and stories like these have been prevalent since I was a kid.
- Cocktail 4y ago
  There is also significant cases before and currently in South Korea, namely illegal immigrants working at farms with nigh-slave labour conditions and factory workers in Samsung/Hyundai etc large multinationals
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    US farming is rife with indentured servitude / slave conditions, in cooperation with ICE and law enforcement
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I like how US federal overtime laws specifically exclude agricultural workers. I cannot imagine any reasoning to do this other than to take advantage of farm workers that are poor and probably do not know English. So politically, the nation wanted people to have a minimum, albeit pathetic, pay to quality of life at work ratio. But even then, it was okay to explicitly screw at least one tribe of people. And entering 2023, there is still no political impetus to fix this.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        Everyone gets screwed commensurate to their organized labor power. Industries of "illegal" immigrants have the least leverage, and that's reflected in institutional legal frameworks
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  Why do people still go? Pure desperation? A few actual success stories?
  - mmsimanga 4y ago
    This is the question we should be asking. As an African I know a few people, qualified teachers who migrate to UK and US to care for elderly there. I don't think the world wants to answer that question. I see headline after headline on the plight of refugees and immigrants and yet the people in leadership positions for those countries where immigrants come from are never really asked any tough persistent questions. I see the same leaders addressing the UN and often accusing the countries that accept refugees from their own country of ill treating them. Talk about hypocrisy. Anyway a root cause analysis is needed but everyone seems content to deal with the symptoms so the underlying problems causing desperation and seeking of greener pastures at all costs continue.
  - lawgimenez 4y ago
    In Philippines the jobs are concentrated on the capital Manila, and a couple of Metropolitan cities. But the rest are in the province with scarce job opportunities. Plus residing in the capital is not easy with cost of living very high and crowded. Mainly the salaries are very low plus survivorship bias to those who made it.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  There was a case recently of a couple in San Francisco holding their nanny against her will.
  - lawgimenez 4y ago
    This is new, Americans/Canadians/EU are the most friendly with immigrants. An isolated case maybe.
jacquesm 4y ago
[flagged]
- milkshakes 4y ago
  what?
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    'have' denotes property, slaves are property. It just jumped out at me.
    - milkshakes 4y ago
      i didn’t downvote but i think “i have {{person}} working for me” is fairly idiomatic american english. that’s why i was confused.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        But that's not what it says, it literally says 'we have a Filipino woman, who works for us'. The difference is subtle and that's what made it jump out at me. If it were written the way you just did that likely would not have happened. I assume this is because this isn't my first language even though I use English more than Dutch these days but oddities like that jump out at me likely much more pronounced than they would to someone who is born into the language. If I had written something to the same effect it would likely have been 'A Filipino woman who works for us' just to avoid that sense of possession, doubly so because of the context.
        IsoldesKnight 4y ago
        > it literally says 'we have a Filipino woman, who works for us'. It _literally_ does not say that. You added a comma which changes the expression.
        4y ago
mythhouse 4y ago
I know maids from my mothers village in kerala India that have been imprisoned there and passports taken away. Some of them have had no contact for decades. lots of men are imprisoned there too in similar circumstances. People think slavery is a relic of the past but We have the highest number of slaves now in history of humanity.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- d_tr 4y ago
  > People think slavery is a relic of the past but We have the highest number of slaves now in history of humanity. Like Eva Kaili who was defending Qatar in the European Parliament. In that case it seems that a few bags of money was the culprit for her ignorance though, along with a few drinks in some kitsch club there.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    She's enjoying an extended stay in a local hostel right now courtesy of those bags of money. Rightly so.
  - mythhouse 4y ago
    Yea that might be a visible example of corruption but the way I see its exploration of weak humans by a larger wealthy set human beings. There are men imprisoned on fishing boats in asia where public turns a blind eye because of their own selfishness. And then there is slaves digging up cobalt in africa with their bare hands( JRE episode recently ) to supply us gadgets. I think politicians just give us a way out to absolve ourselves from the exploitation that we all are willingly involved in.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - d_tr 4y ago
      I completely agree!
iniekaas 4y ago
I finished my highschool in Qatar, and a part of the program was an internship. Mine was at QFCHT, Qatar Foundation for Combating Human Trafficking. It was just a bunch of houses in which maids who don’t have things going well with their Sponsors stay in, waiting for a ticket back home. The QFCHT would just host them and negotiate the sponsor for sending them home. Like, a 2-floor 5-room or so house that has 10 maids living in it. Their passports are confiscated by their sponsors, who were often times irrational egoistic wretches who believe they’re superior (keep in mind that the sample at QFCHT was the set of maids with the worst sponsors, I’ve seen a lot of kind Qataris who were fair and respectable). I heard though that this sponsor system has changed a while ago, not sure how is it done now since I no longer live there, but hope it’s better. We once, at our home, needed help cleaning so we called one of those Maid agencies for a temporary cleaning. They sent us a Filipino maid. While she was cleaning, she came across my little library that I had been growing during my ECE bachelors. She looked at the books and asked me if I am studying electronics. Started talking about her graduation project back home. She had graduated from ECE too.. I saw that with Nepali workers too. Many of them were highly educated, qualified, individuals, but I don’t know what financial situation compelled them to come to Qatar to work as waiters, maids, and other jobs that are way below their qualifications. I tried to learn some phrases in their language to joke with them and cheer them up when I interact with them. It always felt odd being on the service-receiving side. A lot of them were resilient in keeping their smile and sanity in spite of the assholic treatment a specific class of customers. That class earned the “bakla” title.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  There are a lot of factors but the ones I could think of right now are salary of engineering graduates here in Philippines are very low and culturally. Culturally in the sense that in provinces, some parents treat their kids as "investment". I paid your college tuition so when you graduate you should start paying back by buying us a house, car, phones, etc. So there's really that pressure to get a high paying job right away.
- tejohnso 4y ago
  > Their passports are confiscated by their sponsors How does this work? As an adult, if someone tries to take my passport I would refuse. If they snatched it out of my hands, I would take it back. If they somehow got the better of me and hid it or locked it up, I'd go to the police. I could see maybe an abusive situation where going to the police isn't an option because the victim is locked in the house. In that case I'd expect that when the perpetrators are caught they'd be charged with kidnapping for that. And then some other charge (theft?) for locking up the passport.

by newmac 4y ago

ianai 4y ago

I hope she makes it out safely. Both of them.

xpWr7r1ZeX 4y ago

Does she need the entry visa stamp on the new passport to exit? Or able to get the old passport from her current employers

newmac 4y ago
She cannot get her old passport. If her "employers" know she is leaving, they will stop it. I won't post about how we plan to get her out but I believe it is a good one and it has very littler risk to her or their brother. Perhaps when it is all done will feel ok posting more. It is costing us a lot of money in the end, but the woman we employ is part of the family at this point and it's important to us that her sister is safe. We will employ the sister on her landing in our country and will do so for at least a year.

lawgimenez 4y ago

As a Filipino, I have heard so many stories of abuse not just in Arab countries but also in Hong Kong and Singapore. edit: I'm almost 40 now and stories like these have been prevalent since I was a kid.

Cocktail 4y ago
There is also significant cases before and currently in South Korea, namely illegal immigrants working at farms with nigh-slave labour conditions and factory workers in Samsung/Hyundai etc large multinationals
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  US farming is rife with indentured servitude / slave conditions, in cooperation with ICE and law enforcement
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I like how US federal overtime laws specifically exclude agricultural workers. I cannot imagine any reasoning to do this other than to take advantage of farm workers that are poor and probably do not know English. So politically, the nation wanted people to have a minimum, albeit pathetic, pay to quality of life at work ratio. But even then, it was okay to explicitly screw at least one tribe of people. And entering 2023, there is still no political impetus to fix this.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      Everyone gets screwed commensurate to their organized labor power. Industries of "illegal" immigrants have the least leverage, and that's reflected in institutional legal frameworks
karmakurtisaani 4y ago
Why do people still go? Pure desperation? A few actual success stories?
- mmsimanga 4y ago
  This is the question we should be asking. As an African I know a few people, qualified teachers who migrate to UK and US to care for elderly there. I don't think the world wants to answer that question. I see headline after headline on the plight of refugees and immigrants and yet the people in leadership positions for those countries where immigrants come from are never really asked any tough persistent questions. I see the same leaders addressing the UN and often accusing the countries that accept refugees from their own country of ill treating them. Talk about hypocrisy. Anyway a root cause analysis is needed but everyone seems content to deal with the symptoms so the underlying problems causing desperation and seeking of greener pastures at all costs continue.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  In Philippines the jobs are concentrated on the capital Manila, and a couple of Metropolitan cities. But the rest are in the province with scarce job opportunities. Plus residing in the capital is not easy with cost of living very high and crowded. Mainly the salaries are very low plus survivorship bias to those who made it.
iancmceachern 4y ago
There was a case recently of a couple in San Francisco holding their nanny against her will.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  This is new, Americans/Canadians/EU are the most friendly with immigrants. An isolated case maybe.

jacquesm 4y ago

[flagged]

milkshakes 4y ago
what?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  'have' denotes property, slaves are property. It just jumped out at me.
  - milkshakes 4y ago
    i didn’t downvote but i think “i have {{person}} working for me” is fairly idiomatic american english. that’s why i was confused.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      But that's not what it says, it literally says 'we have a Filipino woman, who works for us'. The difference is subtle and that's what made it jump out at me. If it were written the way you just did that likely would not have happened. I assume this is because this isn't my first language even though I use English more than Dutch these days but oddities like that jump out at me likely much more pronounced than they would to someone who is born into the language. If I had written something to the same effect it would likely have been 'A Filipino woman who works for us' just to avoid that sense of possession, doubly so because of the context.
      - IsoldesKnight 4y ago
        > it literally says 'we have a Filipino woman, who works for us'. It _literally_ does not say that. You added a comma which changes the expression.
        4y ago

mythhouse 4y ago

I know maids from my mothers village in kerala India that have been imprisoned there and passports taken away. Some of them have had no contact for decades. lots of men are imprisoned there too in similar circumstances. People think slavery is a relic of the past but We have the highest number of slaves now in history of humanity.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
d_tr 4y ago
> People think slavery is a relic of the past but We have the highest number of slaves now in history of humanity. Like Eva Kaili who was defending Qatar in the European Parliament. In that case it seems that a few bags of money was the culprit for her ignorance though, along with a few drinks in some kitsch club there.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  She's enjoying an extended stay in a local hostel right now courtesy of those bags of money. Rightly so.
- mythhouse 4y ago
  Yea that might be a visible example of corruption but the way I see its exploration of weak humans by a larger wealthy set human beings. There are men imprisoned on fishing boats in asia where public turns a blind eye because of their own selfishness. And then there is slaves digging up cobalt in africa with their bare hands( JRE episode recently ) to supply us gadgets. I think politicians just give us a way out to absolve ourselves from the exploitation that we all are willingly involved in.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - d_tr 4y ago
    I completely agree!

iniekaas 4y ago

I finished my highschool in Qatar, and a part of the program was an internship. Mine was at QFCHT, Qatar Foundation for Combating Human Trafficking. It was just a bunch of houses in which maids who don’t have things going well with their Sponsors stay in, waiting for a ticket back home. The QFCHT would just host them and negotiate the sponsor for sending them home. Like, a 2-floor 5-room or so house that has 10 maids living in it. Their passports are confiscated by their sponsors, who were often times irrational egoistic wretches who believe they’re superior (keep in mind that the sample at QFCHT was the set of maids with the worst sponsors, I’ve seen a lot of kind Qataris who were fair and respectable). I heard though that this sponsor system has changed a while ago, not sure how is it done now since I no longer live there, but hope it’s better. We once, at our home, needed help cleaning so we called one of those Maid agencies for a temporary cleaning. They sent us a Filipino maid. While she was cleaning, she came across my little library that I had been growing during my ECE bachelors. She looked at the books and asked me if I am studying electronics. Started talking about her graduation project back home. She had graduated from ECE too.. I saw that with Nepali workers too. Many of them were highly educated, qualified, individuals, but I don’t know what financial situation compelled them to come to Qatar to work as waiters, maids, and other jobs that are way below their qualifications. I tried to learn some phrases in their language to joke with them and cheer them up when I interact with them. It always felt odd being on the service-receiving side. A lot of them were resilient in keeping their smile and sanity in spite of the assholic treatment a specific class of customers. That class earned the “bakla” title.

lawgimenez 4y ago
There are a lot of factors but the ones I could think of right now are salary of engineering graduates here in Philippines are very low and culturally. Culturally in the sense that in provinces, some parents treat their kids as "investment". I paid your college tuition so when you graduate you should start paying back by buying us a house, car, phones, etc. So there's really that pressure to get a high paying job right away.
tejohnso 4y ago
> Their passports are confiscated by their sponsors How does this work? As an adult, if someone tries to take my passport I would refuse. If they snatched it out of my hands, I would take it back. If they somehow got the better of me and hid it or locked it up, I'd go to the police. I could see maybe an abusive situation where going to the police isn't an option because the victim is locked in the house. In that case I'd expect that when the perpetrators are caught they'd be charged with kidnapping for that. And then some other charge (theft?) for locking up the passport.