When Angela Guanzon was offered the opportunity to leave the Philippines and work in the United States, she felt like she had won the lottery. But when she arrived, her dream turned into a nightmare. Guanzon was told by the Filipino woman who brought her and 10 others to the U.S. that she owed $12,000 and would have to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week in an elderly care facility in Los Angeles for 10 years in order to pay off the debt.

“I eat table scraps and sleep in the hallways on the floor,” Guanzon told the California Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee on April 24 about her life then. “My coworkers and I were told that if we tried to escape we would be deported, they are calling the police and telling them that we stole something from her.”

After more than two years of hard labor, her life changed for the better when a person living near the facility noticed that the workers rarely left the building, and notified the police. Guanzon told her story to the FBI and testified in court, resulting in the woman who victimized her being sentenced to five years in prison. Since then Guanzon has become a nursing assistant and is working with the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking to help human trafficking victims.

“We’re a group of survivors learning leadership and raising awareness and influencing policies to better protect human trafficking survivors,” she said. “What happened to me happens to a lot of workers. Some workers end up enslaved in farms all over the U.S. with armed guards.”

SB 516

Guanzon spoke at the committee hearing in support of SB 516, which is designed to crack down on unscrupulous foreign labor contractors and the employers that use them.

“Workers like me need more information and protection, so in case we take an opportunity to come here and work we have freedom like everybody,” she told the committee. “We need more protection. Please help us.”

SB 516 has had no problem sailing through the Legislature. But, as with much well intended legislation, there are concerns that it could do harm as well as good.

The bill “[a]pproaches the real problem of human trafficking in an overly broad manner that will harm legitimate employers by imposing significant burdens on and risks to California employers who hire workers from foreign countries,” wrote the California Chamber of Commerce in its current bill priority list. Numerous trade associations for businesses that hire foreign workers are also opposed.

SB 516 would require several things of foreign labor contractors. They:

* Must register with the state labor commissioner, who could investigate them, including whether they have ever violated the law.

* Must post a surety bond between $25,000-$75,000 based on gross receipts up to $2 million.

* Must pay fines of $1,000-$25,000 per violation. Enforcement actions can be brought by the labor commissioner or a violated worker.

* Cannot charge a fee to the workers for their employment services and cannot threaten or coerce them.

In addition, employers cannot contract with an unregistered contractor.

Darrell Steinberg

The bill’s author, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, told the committee that SB 516 is the first of a two-bill set that seeks to protect immigrant workers and foreign labor contractors.

“While many contractors behave ethically and lawfully, there are some that do not,” Steinberg said. “They can misuse the U.S. visa programs to exploit workers. They can charge exorbitant fees for their services. They can force workers into debt bondage. They can falsify documents and deceive workers about the terms and conditions of their present employment. They can threaten workers with blacklisting and discrimination and other forms of retaliation, including the imposition of additional fees if the workers themselves choose to complain.”

Steinberg did not say how large of a problem this is in California. But it’s potentially significant given that there were about 130,000 temporary foreign workers in the state as of January 2011.

“The bill would require foreign labor contractors to disclose the full and fair information to foreign workers in the language they understand about the terms and conditions of their work here in California,” he said. “We make it illegal for a contractor to knowingly provide a worker with false or misleading information. We prohibit a foreign labor contractor from soliciting a worker to come to California unless there’s a bona fide offer of employment. We prohibit charging the worker a fee for recruiting activities. The employer ought to recruit the worker because he or she is needed in California.”

Slavery

Stephanie Richard, the legal and policy director for the bill’s sponsor, the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, told the committee that slavery is still alive and well in America nearly 150 years after the Civil War ended.

“In 2013 slaves may not be chained or shackled, but they are no freer,” she said. “Slavery is not simply ownership of one person over another. Modern day slavery is much more subtle. Trafficking victims work in factories in the United States. Trafficking victims harvest our vegetables, process foods that end up on our dining room tables. They clean people’s homes and take care of the young, elderly and sick. They are enslaved not only through physical restraint bonds, but also through coercion, fear and intimidation. In today’s global economy, workers can be enslaved by threats of deportation, lack of viable alternatives and especially debt.

“Often we think of undocumented immigrants as the most vulnerable to human trafficking. What CAST is seeing today in our caseload, as well as other service providers around the United States, is that trafficking is flourishing in our documented temporary visa worker programs. In fact, in CAST’s current caseload today, 50 percent of our workers came in through unlawful visas. This needs to change. SB 516 is one of the few preventative measures that we have seen that California can enact to eradicate modern day slavery in our own back yard.”

Concerns

No one spoke in opposition to the bill. But the legislative analyst has cited numerous concerns raised by business groups.

“According to [this bill], any person or company that assists in securing or actually secures or provides employment to foreign workers for compensation is a foreign labor contractor, and as such, any employer who hires a foreign worker would be subject to the requirements of the bill,” wrote the California Chamber of Commerce. “Accordingly, this sweeping definition appears to include employers of all foreign workers who enter the U. S. legitimately through different types of visas. These workers are often assisted by a variety of entities, or recruited by the employer, all of which under this bill will be designated as foreign labor contractors.”

The workers can include computer engineers, doctors, nurses, college students that work seasonally in theme parks and resorts, actors and other movie and television professionals, according to the Chamber. Businesses are most concerned about the bill’s bond and registration requirements, which could result in penalties and lawsuits if any of the detailed information is incomplete or inaccurate.

“[N]o actual harm must be shown to bring a private right of action; anyone who believes there is a violation can file a lawsuit,” the Chamber states.

Opponents also point out that immigration reform is currently being considered in Congress, which could result in conflicting or duplicative requirements on California employers and foreign labor contractors. As a result, they are concerned that “California employers who hire foreign workers will be at a competitive disadvantage to businesses in other states because they will face higher litigation risks, and higher burdens.”

Steinberg is proposing amendments to address some of those concerns, which are scheduled to be considered by the Assembly Judiciary Committee on Aug. 13.

By John Seiler

I got some pretty good response to my article, “Brown official: You’re our slave.” I was attacking the statement by Gil Duran, Gov. Jerry Brown’s press secretary, “We have to look beyond our personal interests to where we are going as a society.”

I wrote, “Translation: As a taxpayer, you’re the slave of government.”

I just found an article with a similar theme to mine by David Mamet, the writer and director. He’s been moving to the right for some years. In the liberal Village Voice in 2008, he wrote, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal.'”

His latest, for Newsweek no less, “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm,” worth reading in full. He doesn’t pull any punches and at the top brings up Socialist No. 1:

“Karl Marx summed up Communism as ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

“For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called ‘The State,’ and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read ‘The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.’ ‘Needs and abilities’ are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to ‘the State shall take, the State shall give.’”

Right. That’s the operative mode of Duran-Brown. It’s also that of President Obama in his statement, “You didn’t build that.” And Obama’s State of the Union Address on Jan. 21 positively dripped with contempt for individual freedom and with the glorification of the collective.

Bureaucrats

More Mamet:

“All of us have had dealings with the State, and have found, to our chagrin, or, indeed, terror, that we were not dealing with well-meaning public servants or even with ideologues but with overworked, harried bureaucrats. These, as all bureaucrats, obtain and hold their jobs by complying with directions and suppressing the desire to employ initiative, compassion, or indeed, common sense. They are paid to follow orders.

“Rule by bureaucrats and functionaries is an example of the first part of the Marxist equation: that the Government shall determine the individual’s abilities.

“As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator. The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

“President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent [Mitt Romney], alleging that each has more money than he ‘needs.’

“But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining ‘needs’? And note that the president did not say ‘I have more money than I need,’ but ‘You and I have more than we need.’ Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

“It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. ‘One-size-fits-all,’ and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is ‘slavery.’”

Slavery

Mamet gets it. About 40 percent of my money is seized by the government. And faceless government bureaucrats minutely control at least another 25 percent of my life through mindless regulations. So, about two-thirds of my life is not mine, but the government’s. I’m their slave.

Sure, I get to “vote” for which of two whip-yielding masters takes my money. But I never get to vote to set myself free. As to elections, see “Wag the Dog,” screenplay by Mamet.

As Walter Williams, whose ancestors were chattel slaves here in America before 1865, pointed out:

“A good working description is: slavery is a set of circumstances whereby one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor.

“The average American worker toils from January 1st to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period. Federal, state and local governments, through the tax code, take what he produces. A small portion of the fruits of his labor is used to provide for the constitutional functions of government. Most of what’s taken, up to two-thirds, is given to some other American in the forms of farm and business subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, welfare and hundreds of other government handout programs. As in slavery, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person.”

If we followed the Constitution, government would be about 2 percent of what it is today, and wouldn’t regulate us at all. But we don’t.

A slave revolt is brewing.

Today is government’s favorite day: Tax day. It comes three days later this year, on April 18. The usual date is April 15.

The reason is that, this year, April 15, is celebrated in Washington, D.C. as Emancipation Day, the day President Lincoln freed the slaves in that city.

But for taxpayers, April 15 — or April 18 — is Enslavement Day. It’s the day each of us must give a reckoning to our Slave Masters in the government plantations for our incomes. Of course, since World War II the federal government makes us withhold our earnings from every paycheck. And the California government has done so since the late 1960s.

So, in a sense, every day is Enslavement Day — 365 of them every year, 366 in leap years.

What else can you call a system in which one half of the average person’s income is stolen by the government plantation for the Slave Masters? Lincoln said, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

Lincoln was right: Today, America is all slave.

The only reason the tax burden on us slaves isn’t above 50 percent is because, throughout history, the slaveowners realized they had to allow their slaves something to live on. So, our government grabs half from its slaves — us — but lets us live on the other half.

The current slave system makes a mockery of the American Founders’ establishment of a free country back in 1776-1789. They actually rebelled over a tea tax. Yet, who today wouldn’t exchange a minor tax on tea for the massive, repressive, enslaving income taxes and other taxes of today?

We live on a big plantation, with the Slave Masters in D.C., the state Capitol and other governments lording it over us, their slaves, stealing the money we earned from the sweat of our labor so that the Slave Masters can live lavish lifestyles — then retire with even more lavish lifestyles.

Do we have a “democracy” in which we can choose our leaders? It’s no more than the choice of which plantation foremen will beat us into submission.

Our only hope is that the day of a slave revolt is near.

April 18, 2011

I thought the 13th Amendment abolished slavery? Not for Kelley Williams-Bolar, who is being enslaved in a prison and with “community service” because she sent her kids to the wrong school in the government’s monopoly-school system (itself a form of slavery for children).

Even though this took place in Akron, Ohio, it well could happen here in California. Here’s an article on it. And here’s a video:

Jan. 26, 2011