Latin America
Related: About this forumChilean international students allege Sioux City community college forced them to work at dog food f
Chilean international students allege Sioux City community college forced them to work at dog food factory under threat of deportation
Cleo Krejci
Des Moines Register
Published 1:12 p.m. CT Nov. 30. 2020
Eight Chilean international students say they were subjected to an "organized scheme" and made to work at food processing factories in order to pay off debts when they were enrolled at the Western Iowa Tech Community College in 2019.
The students enrolled in a J-1 visa program intending to attain two-year degrees in culinary arts or robotics in part of a package that they believed would include free tuition, housing, food and internship programs at the Sioux City-based community college, according to a lawsuit filed last week with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
Instead, the students allege, they were exploited for their labor and made to work at factories to pay off debts to the college under threats of deportation and legal action.
" (Employees of the college and their partners) worked in concert to traffic the eight plaintiffs from their home in Chile into debt bondage at a Sioux City, Iowa-area food packaging plant and dog food factory by offering them a degree with free tuition, room, and board," the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants broke the Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.
More:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/education/2020/11/30/western-iowa-tech-community-college-human-trafficking-lawsuit/6426044002/
Terry Murrell, the president of Western Iowa Tech
brush
(53,743 posts)What is with these people?
Judi Lynn
(160,450 posts)Mitch Weiss, Holbrook Mohr and Peter Prengaman, Associated Press
Updated 12:33 am, Monday, July 24, 2017
SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) When Andre Oliveira answered the call to leave his Word of Faith Fellowship congregation in Brazil to move to the mother church in North Carolina at the age of 18, his passport and money were confiscated by church leaders for safekeeping, he said he was told.
Trapped in a foreign land, he said he was forced to work 15 hours a day, usually for no pay, first cleaning warehouses for the secretive evangelical church and later toiling at businesses owned by senior ministers. Any deviation from the rules risked the wrath of church leaders, he said, ranging from beatings to shaming from the pulpit.
"They trafficked us up here. They knew what they were doing. They needed labor and we were cheap labor hell, free labor," Oliveira said.
An Associated Press investigation has found that Word of Faith Fellowship used its two church branches in Latin America's largest nation to siphon a steady flow of young laborers who came on tourist and student visas to its 35-acre compound in rural Spindale.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Brazilians-funneled-as-slaves-by-US-church-11328368.php
Jane Whaley, church founder, blond hair.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141827777
(Please check posts #7 from OldRedneck, and post #12, for interesting info. on that page.)
The link to the AP story doesn't work, so I found the same story, very detailed, at another source:
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/brazilians-funneled-as-slaves-by-us-church-ex-members-say/
SharonClark
(10,014 posts)More information:
1/24/20 - International students claiming abuse at Iowa college submit demands
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2020/01/24/international-students-claiming-abuse-iowa-college-submit-demands/4557730002/
3/16/20 - Western Iowa Tech sending J-1 visa students home with no degree
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2020/03/16/western-iowa-tech-sending-j-1-visa-student-home-no-degree/5058837002/
Judi Lynn
(160,450 posts)So seedy, underhanded, disprespectful of these young people. How dare they? Easy, if they have a big Republican name like Grassley there looking out for himself, and obfuscating the truth of the matter.
Well, the students got to see how a country which would elect something like Trump as its President would operate. Not good at all.
This really leaves a person feeling so ashamed, and angry that they were brought here, their faith in the system thrown mockingly in their faces, treated like dirt, then sent back so much worse off than they were, and feeling disillusioned to the very places that didn't really have anything to sustain them in the first place.
In a way it sounded as if this was their last and best chance to save themselves from an impoverished future.
So because of these two articles, we got a chance to see how a long-time Republican senator acts in his official role in his home state. He is cruel, dishonest, indifferent, and racist. Just what we would have expected. It's the reason he should not go back to the Senate ever again.
Thanks for sharing the bigger picture.