Narayanan Komerath

January 25, 2014

Starting in 2012, the family of Mr. Richard, an Indian worker in the US Embassy in New Delhi, appears to have been enticed into a scam on the promise of US Green Cards. His wife worked as a domestic assistant to Ms. Uzra Zeya at the US Embassy in India in 2002-2007[1]. His son worked as a chauffeur[2] for the Mozambique Embassy in Delhi. The daughter-in-law, Sangeeta Richard, applied as a live-in maid for the Indian Deputy Consul-General in New York, Dr. Devyani Khobragade.

Dr. Khobragade is married to an American university professor[3], and a mother of two kids, 6 and 3 years old. She is a living counter to many stereotypes. She was born in a so-called “Scheduled Caste” (aka “Dalit”) Indian family. Her father started as a manual laborer, but earned an education and retired at the top of the Indian Administrative Service. Perhaps both father and daughter were helped by India’s Affirmative Action laws – that was certainly intended by the voters who approved those laws. She graduated as a medical doctor. She then sought to repay her nation, working in India’s Foreign Service, devoted to empowering women.  Before coming to the USA she was posted in Pakistan, hardly a luxury posting!  She was a friend that the US should have treasured, and an example of everything in which we Americans believe.  Clearly this made her a target for some people.

Most of us can agree that it is important to protect the civil rights of domestic workers. The law is clear on that too, and conscientious, thoughtful law enforcement should be supported and applauded. Cynically misusing law enforcement powers and access to public media on this pretext, and bringing our nation into disrepute, is quite a different thing.

A careful reading of the timeline and facts leaves little doubt that this was orchestrated from the start as a propaganda ploy, with no regard for the human costs. The high-profile ruckus was timed to resonate with the recent White House release of the Federal Strategic Action Plan[5] on Services for Victims of Human Trafficking.  This appears to be pandering to the worst xenophobic and racist sentiments that politicians  and their appointees solicit without any signs of introspection or parental guidance.

In March 2013 Uzra Zeya was appointed[6], acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, after serving as Executive Secretary to the State Department’s Accountability Review Board[7] probing the September 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. In March/April 2013 Ms. Richard demanded to be allowed to work outside the Consulate on her “off days”, which is illegal for her visa status[8]. This should be compared to her later claim[9] that she had no “off-days” and was exhausted from over-work on her “on-days”. On June 21, 2013, the diplomat left her two kids in Ms. Richard’s care while she went on a 2-day trip. Ms. Richard chose this time to desert the kids and disappeared with money given for groceries and the diplomat’s cellphone. The disappearance was not discovered until the diplomat returned1 on June 23; a missing person complaint was eventually accepted by NYC police on June 25. An investigative report in the UK Daily Mail[10] details the clear, deliberate complicity of the State Department in ensuring that all efforts of the Indian diplomats to follow the law and cooperate with US authorities were ignored.

In mid-July extortionary demands were made, leading India to cancel Ms. Richard’s official passport and demand her return. In mid-September, responding to the State Department, the Indians pointed out that Ms. Richard was seeking to subvert both Indian and American laws.  In mid November, an Indian court issued an arrest warrant[11] for Ms. Richard. On December 10, the US BDS officials in Delhi violated Indian laws by acquiring tax-free diplomatic tickets[12], and American law by issuing “trafficking” visas apparently ordered (illegally?) by Secretary Zeya’s office[13], to Ms. Richard’s husband and children, and brought them to America to add to our numbers of illegal aliens. Compare this to the months that the US Embassy takes to issue visas to professionals to attend conferences in the USA!

Two days later, the diplomat was arrested in a publicity stunt that would put the Keystone Kops to shame, as she dropped off her kids at school[14], based on charges filed by an agent of the BDS[15].  They then proceeding to have her manacled, stripped and “cavity-searched”– Orwellian-speak for custodial rape – and the fact publicized[16].  I ask the same question that outraged villagers asked in the 1970s movie “Ryan’s Daughter” set in 1940s Ireland[17]:“Whose idea was the stripping up?”  This was much worse here, in 2013 America!

I have read the “indictment” that the US attorney’s office in New York appears to have railroaded through a Grand Jury[18]. With all due respect, it is asinine, describing the natural role of a live-in family member as “109 hours per week of work with no overtime pay” etc.  Any school-teacher, policeman and I am sure lawmaker, works even longer hours than that, because we care about those entrusted to us, and think about it all the time! While looking after 2 school-age kids and keeping up an apartment are certainly full-time jobs, they are not slavery or abuse any more than “Alice” in the American Brady Bunch[19] TV show who looked after six children was a slave.

From the facts that I can ascertain[20], I assume that any reasonable US court will dismiss all charges against the Indian diplomat. The brutality inflicted on her offends us all as human beings and makes me ashamed as an American that it was done in the name of my country by employees paid with our taxes.

After pleas to reason fell on deaf ears and inflated heads, the Indian government, responding to widespread outrage, is now proceeding to figuratively strip and expose our government’s duplicity and stupidity in no uncertain terms:

More is to come, I am sure, and will not be pretty.  We as citizens would appreciate the leadership of the US Congress in demanding common decency and accountability at the State Department and the White House. Even school teachers know better than to post racist rants on Facebook pages. Is the US Bureau of Diplomatic Security headed by someone who is unaware of basic Internet common sense? Has he not endangered all our diplomats? Who hired this man? Was it the recent Presidential appointee famous for having (literally) shot himself in the foot? Who employed the BDS official’s wife as an expert on international community relations, given her gross lack of sense? Are State Department appointments now done on nepotism? How did the Board of the American Embassy School, with two members directly appointed by the Ambassador, allow and even order its employees to blatantly dodge taxes and lie on visa forms, and give false ID numbers to deposit salaries? Should these people not be prosecuted under US racketeering and money-laundering laws?

It is clear from the above that the purported basis for the prosecution of the Indian diplomat, is a grotesque and malicious distortion of the law set out to protect domestic workers from exploitation and virtual slavery. The law is well-intentioned and commendable, but in the hands of the cynical, the arrogant and the zealously thoughtless, as only government can be, it is been turned into a disaster for domestic workers and the United States alike. New York set a minimum wage of $9.73, applicable alike to American fast-food workers who must pay to live 2 hours away and commute to Manhattan, and for live-in nannies who are treated like family members in a luxury household in downtown with all her living expenses paid. The State Department decided arbitrarily that no in-kind payments could be subtracted from the $9.75, which may be admirable to prevent extreme cases where all of a worker’s salary may be deducted, but which was certainly not the case here. The prosecutor here has pursued a completely senseless interpretation of that law, taking cynical advantage of a situation where a woman diplomat with a clear record of taking active interest in the plight of women workers, went out of her way to treat her own domestic assistant as a family member in every way.  The Indian diplomat was targeted because this was a case of a woman living in a home with a woman boss and two small daughters: the nanny was clearly a member of the family with the full run of the household, and as such was naturally “on call” as much as a family member would be. By no fair standard was this person a victim of mistreatment or exploitation, it was the other way around.

Is the New York Federal Prosecutor too competence-challenged to see this, or did he deliberately ignore the obvious, in pursuing his bungling? Why did he ignore the fact that there were complaints on both sides, the one against the maid for dishonesty preceding the retaliatory complaint by the maid and her gang of coaches?  In any event, we are left with a mess that makes the United States of America, far from being a protector of the weak, as a bunch of sadistic bullies run by cynically hate-filled entities, intent on destroying alliances between free democracies. This calls for an in-depth Congressional investigation and accounting.

A few long-term consequences may be predicted:

1. Yes, foreign diplomats will be “sensitized” to the need to follow the letter of American state law in employing domestic assistants, whether imported or local. This outcome could have been achieved through far less sensational or clumsy means.

2. Most diplomats will decide not to hire anyone of the sort. Their children will either stay back, or they will get grandparents to accompany them. The net loss is to the American tax base, and probably to the quality of upbringing that these children will experience, a loss blamed on America, creating resentment against America.

3. Many foreign missions will simply choose to replace the domestic assistant headcount with other designations covered by full diplomatic immunity. The population of undeclared and declared foreign secret agents, media experts and trade coordinators in America may thus be expected to rise, and with it, foreign influence.

4. The arrangement to deposit part of the US-earned wages directly to savings in the home country, will be abandoned, and the assistants left to fend for themselves in saving for their families.

5. Families all over the USA will recoil from the reports of this incident, and from any plans to hire domestic help if they can in any way avoid it. News reports already cite the extreme difficulty that many Americans have in finding enough hours at the wages that they can command, to make ends meet. This will be aggravated. Childcare quality will also suffer.

6. Any prospects of “live-in” domestic workers will be greatly reduced, since those benefits are not counted in hourly wages. Workers will be forced to commute long hours, and pay for their own quality of life. Childcare quality will suffer.

7. Governments all over the world will re-examine the operations of the US Embassy and Consulates in their countries, for tax evasion, visa fraud, giving out trafficking visas illegally, and various other nefarious activities. The credibility of the United States has been crippled by the revelations from the American Embassy School.

In 2011, American farmworkers, grocery store cashiers, park attendants etc earned around $1600 per month ,  averaging around $9.3 per hour, from which they had to pay all expenses and taxes. Employers will respond to extortionary “laws” on minimum wage for hourly employees by cutting back their hours to stay within their own fixed budgets, with negative results all round.  Dictating both an hourly wage and a regular guaranteed number of hours per week for these workers is going to fail in most cases. Further, regarding any call on live-in workers beyond a fixed working day as overtime, when they have probably been idle most of the day, will only destroy prospects for live-in arrangements.  What I do not see is the prospect of childcare/ domestic worker monthly income rising above that earned by these workers.  Perhaps the market for childcare/cooking robots will rise rapidly, if those robots can be imported from China to help the Obama administration destroy yet another caring human service in the USA.