Is the U.S. Crazy?

[JonLP24]

25. Yes, I pointed out it is wonderful from where they're coming from

It is still rose colored glasses contrary to the "uncomfortable questions" described in the above article.

As you kindly put, allow me to share some information of my own about the very same people we're talking about.

Blood, Sweat & Tears:
Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq

Jing Soliman left his family half way around the world in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing – a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. He would be working for Prime Projects International of Dubai, a major, but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton’s multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to provide support services to U.S. forces.

But Soliman wouldn’t be making anything near the salaries starting at $80,000 a year and often topping more than $100,000 paid to truck drivers, construction workers, office workers and other laborers recruited in the United States by Halliburton’s subsidiary, KBR. Instead, the 35-year-old father of two looked forward to earning $615 a month – including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that’s just over $3 an hour, but Soliman made even less. He says the standard work week was 12-hour days, seven days a week, so he was actually earning $1.56 an hour.

For a year’s work, Soliman would receive $7,380(from a paycheck that is handed down from a US defense contractor). He planned to send most of his paychecks home to his family, where the combined unemployment rate tops 28 percent and the average annual income in Manila is $4,384. Nearly half of the nation's 84 million people live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

<snip>

TCNs frequently sleep in crowded trailers, wait outside in line in 100 degree heat to eat “slop,” lack adequate medical care and work almost every waking hour seven days a week for little or no overtime pay. Frequently, the workers lack proper safety equipment for hard labor

<snip>

Adding to these hardships, some TCNs complain publicly about not being paid according to their contracts and they also accuse their employers of “bait-and-switch” recruitment tactics where they are falsely recruited for jobs in the Middle East and then pressured to work in Iraq. Once in Iraq, their passports are held to prevent them from escaping. All of these problems have resulted in labor disputes, including labor strikes and work stoppages at US military camps.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675

Baghdad Bound, Forced Labor of Third-Country Nationals

http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~review/vol60n3/Brown_Macro%20%28no%20time%20stamp%29.pdf

After 12 years of war, labor abuses rampant on US bases in Afghanistan

Over the past decade, the U.S. military has outsourced its overseas base-support responsibilities to private contractors, which have filled the lowest-paying jobs on military bases with third-country nationals, migrant workers who are neither U.S. citizens nor locals. As of January 2014, there were 37,182 third-country nationals working on bases in the U.S. Central Command region, which includes Afghanistan and Iraq — outnumbering both American and local contract workers.

<snip>



These laborers do the cooking, cleaning, laundry, construction and other support tasks necessary to operate military facilities. In Afghanistan they primarily come from India and Nepal and are employed by subcontractors for one of two large American companies, Fluor Corp. and Dyncorp International, which manage U.S. bases in Afghanistan under the Department of Defense’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. Dozens of subcontracting companies, mostly headquartered in the Persian Gulf, work on Fluor and Dyncorp contracts.

South Asian workers are at the bottom of the social hierarchy on U.S. bases. They earn far less than American or European contractors, work 12-hour days with little or no time off and, on some bases, aren’t allowed to use cellphones or speak to military personnel. On the base we visited, Camp Marmal, most were surprised and nervous when we approached them, concerned that talking to journalists could get them in trouble. One young man’s face contorted in terror when asked whether he had paid a recruiting fee. He shook his head no, fearful of any reprisals. “To come here, you have to use an agent,” another worker told us. “There is no other way. So we pay money to come.”

An agent is a person from a recruitment agency hired to find laborers for a company — in this case, the subcontractor. Sindhu Kavinamannil, a certified fraud examiner who has investigated labor networks between India and the Middle East, says there are tens of thousands of recruitment agencies in India and Nepal, the majority of them unregistered. They might be headquartered in large cities, she adds, but they each have hundreds of agents and subagents spread out across small towns and villages.

At Camp Marmal, the most prominent Fluor subcontractor is Ecolog International. One current Ecolog employee we met, who didn’t want to be identified, said he paid $4,000 to an agent in his village for a job he was told would pay $1,200 per month. His recruiter told him the final papers would be signed in Dubai, a crucial stopping point for workers en route to Afghanistan. In Dubai he learned his salary would be only $500 per month. Because he had borrowed money at a high interest rate to pay his recruitment fee, he had no choice but to work for an entire year just to earn enough money to pay off his loan.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/7/after-12-years-ofwarlaborabusesrampantonusbasesinafghanistan.html

There are more & more horror stories I could post if you're interested. Do I have to mention they take their passports as soon as they arrive? North Korea does this too. I have stories myself not so much on the corruption end put the danger, fiberglass vehicles, no weapon or armor while enduring this and bigotry from many US troops they all took it in stride they did most of the work in those deployments for meager pay while people here talk about the disparities of what the troops make compared to American citizens working for contractors. We drove convoys they made up roughly 25 vehicles in a 30 truck convoy and all of them except 1 made about $300 a month -- they're boss the one who usually understands the most English made about $600 driving through fucking war zones.

Here, they aren't recognized by the media. The only time you see them is when Obama is being served food in a chow line. They aren't counted in death statistics, we can't even give them a thank you. We treat them like slaves. Americans are only outraged when Qatar does it. They certainly have seen there "fair share" of class warfare from the US and they have never even been in the country. This is what I mean, among countless other things by "rose colored glasses". I wish I was asked those uncomfortable questions.