On the last point, I must be missing something obvious, but why don't those workers who have their passports taken report them lost/stolen and get a new one from their embassy?
Because their job is tied to company owned by the citizen of the host country who employs them (their visa sponsor), and they're probably sending money back home to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh to support a family of eight people. You report that and cause a legal fuss with your employers, you not only don't get paid your previous month of work, you get deported and banned from the UAE or Qatar or Saudi Arabia for life.
The police in UAE are not there to help Indian people get their passports returned... and I suspect it would be incredibly dangerous to start complaining to them; your only reason to be there is to work, cheaply and shut up. You are a second class citizen and it’s unbelievably naive to start sticking your head above your station. You’ll be telling them they should start a union next!
Western expats might be second class citizens in the UAE, with some luck. As a worker from India in the UAE, you are far treated far below a second class citizen, sadly.
So we have an individual that has travelled overseas to earn more money than he would be able to make at home, to better support his family. That is not a slave and calling it slavery cheapens actual slavery IMO.
Now, having said that, the conditions are appalling and the employers do many unscrupulous and illegal things. But it is a voluntary arrangement unlike slavery.
The workers have often had to pay huge fees to brokers to score the job in the first place, often including taking out large loans that must be paid back with the job's income.
On arrival, the worker realizes that everything they have been told is a lie. Their passport is confiscated and they are told that, if they try to run away to their embassy etc, goons will go to their family to extort the money owed for the loans by any means necessary, including torture and death.
Would you still call this a "voluntary arrangement"?
> Would you still call this a "voluntary arrangement"?
Perhaps not for the first guy to ever fall for this. But existing workers are still communicating with the folks back home, so prospective new workers now what to expect and what to believe and not to believe.
I agree that they aren't treated well; but we can't ignore that the situation back home is often even worse.
There are a lot of poor villages in Pakistan or Nepal, a lot of brokers, a lot of different lies to tell and a lot of suckers born every minute. And, of course, there's the odd village boy who beats the odds, strikes it rich (often by getting into a position where he can exploit others, eg as a labor broker), builds a big-ass house and becomes inspiration for others to follow in his footsteps.
No, especially the element of having goons back home to coerce the family sounds like actually slavery. I double check these days. Westerners try to make charity cases out of people from the developing world that are just trying to make a buck like we all do.
