Job Discussion Forums

[cfocpamba]

I was a teacher at the Mianyang Foreign Languages School in Sichuan Province of the People’s Republic of China. After 30 days, I was discharged. I received no salary, severance, or travel reimbursement.

Do you support not paying discharged foreign teachers at British Columbia Ministry of Education certified schools?

Shymia Hall is one of my fellow citizen in the United States. We are awful lucky to have her on our team. She became a US citizen in 2011. Her trip to citizenship was different from most. She is a former slave.

At eight years old, Shymia’s Egyptian parents signed a 10 year agreement giving her to a wealthy Egyptian couple with five children as a maid. Shymia’s parents received $ 30 a month in exchange.

She was brought to the United States in 2000, at the age of ten. Reports are she entered the United States after an Egyptian man made application to travel to the United States as a tourist with his niece, Shymia. Taking Shymia to the United States as a maid was supported by Shymia’s parents. Two alleged event may have been considered. Shymia’s elder sister, reportedly, work for the same Egyptian couple. The Egyptian couple agreed to not press charges of theft against this daughter in exchange for taking Shymia. Also reported is the parents may have accepted loans from the Egyptian couple.

She lived in a 12 x 8 converted area of the family garage, part of a five-bedroom, two-story home in Beaumont, California with an assessed value of $ 665,000. The garage had no heating or air conditioning to combat the moderate Southern California climate. She slept on a squalid mattress. The five children called her stupid. She was beaten. Her responsibilities including doing the families laundry and ironing, cooking and cleaning. Since she was not allow to do her laundry with the family’s clothes, she would hand wash her own laundry.

Two years past before Shymia grew tall enough to be seen doing the dishes at the sink by neighbors. Concerns about an unaccounted for child led to a visit from the police. At first, everyone, including Shymia, denied she was a maid. She was a family friend on an extended visit was the couple’s position. When only pictures and videos of Shymia cleaning could be produced by the family, Shymia was taken into protective custody.
All the Egyptian participants, the couple, Shymia’s family, and Shymia, protested the couple being charged. From their perspective. Shymia’s life had taken a turn for the good by being a maid. Her life prospects in Egypt would have never allowed the trajectory she experienced by being a maid in the United States. It was three years before Shymia came to the conclusion what happened was wrong.

The court had to take a recess for attorney-client consultation when the couple’s plea bargain was accepted by the court. The recess was in the midst of the woman’s admission of guilt. The couple received 3 years in prison and fines in the six figures at the conclusion of the hearing. The children and wife were deported to Egypt. As of 2011, the husband remained in the United States.

My case is different from Shymia’s. I was a teacher. My 73 hour work week was shorter than Shymia’s. Standing for that period is a challenge, but Shymia’s physical excretion was likely harder. No one received any remuneration for my services. I am male, 56, and hold a graduate degree and a professional certification. I have been blessed by being born and raised in the United States. I was provided an agreement the day before my last day teaching. A room in a garage in Orange County was significantly better living conditions than mine in China. I have not found any reference to Shymia’s diet. Mine, however, was below subsistence level. I had access to a washing machine for my clothes. I was required to take unethical, immoral, and illegal actions, all of which I refused. My personal property was confiscated. My quality of life was cruelly diminished by the experience. I am subject to slander and harassment. I knew immediately I was being enslaved. I have been denied any recompense for my slavery.

Slavery is bad and has no place in human existence. Slavery sanctified by government without due process is terrifying and disgusting.

[muffintop]

If you were working legally, you have ways to address this. If you were not working legally....there is nobody to blame but yourself.

Honestly...your post is a big wall of.....what the hell???....

[Bud Powell]

I think I got this as an email from Prince Svimbi of Nigeria a few weeks ago.


None of this passes the smell test.

I got a whiff of it as soon as I logged in.

[spiral78]

cfocpamba wants us to send US dollars by wire transfer to cover the month's salary he/she lost?


This is indeed simple, as has already been pointed out.

If one is working legally and gets stiffed (happens in all countries from time to time) the worker has legal recourse.

If one is working illegally, that was a bad idea and the worker is responsible. Lesson learned - move on.

Actually, I think it's extremely offensive to collate a real slavery story with getting messed about by a dodgy employer for a month - but I don't want to feed a troll.

[Bud Powell]

"...but Shymia’s physical excretion was likely harder..."

Now I know why it didn't pass the smell test.

I think I know where the OP got the idea for his sob story:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/16/local/la-me-1216-shyima-hall-20111216

Los Angeles Times December 16, 2011

Sold into Slavery as a Girl, Shyima Hall Becomes a U.S. Citizen


A decade ago, Shyima Hall was smuggled into the United States as a 10-year-old slave, forced to cook and clean inside the home of a wealthy Irvine family and, at night, sleep on a squalid mattress in a windowless garage.

On Thursday, the Egyptian-born 22-year-old stood before a federal judge in Montebello with nearly 900 others and was sworn in as naturalized U.S. citizen. The ceremony capped a hard-scrabble journey that began with Hall's rescue, wound through the foster care system and ended with her living on her own, working, and with ambitions to become a federal agent.

"I went through something terrible, but right now I'm in a great place," Hall said after Thursday's citizenship ceremony at the Quiet Cannon Country Club. "I can't imagine anything greater than having my own life."

Hall's Egyptian parents sold her into slavery when she was 8 for $30 a month, according to authorities. The Cairo couple who bought her moved to Irvine two years later, smuggling Hall into the U.S. where she toiled for them and their five children until she was 13.

Hall said she worked 16 hour days, scrubbing floors, cooking meals and cleaning house, and was rarely allowed outside the spacious home. She was forced to wash her own clothes in a bucket and was forbidden from going to school. She never visited a doctor or dentist and didn't speak a word of English.

Her captors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, berated her and occasionally slapped her around, authorities said.

"I didn't know anything about what America was about. My only hope was to go back home and live a normal life with my family, my brothers and sisters,'' she said. "That's all I wanted."

In 2002, acting on a tip from a concerned neighbor, child welfare authorities rescued her from the house. Her case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading to the prosecution, federal imprisonment and, later, deportation of Ibrahim and Motelib.

Hall formed a tight bond with one of the lead federal agents, Mark Abend of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations, who has served as a friend and mentor. He was at Hall's citizenship ceremony Thursday.

"I'm really proud of her. Think of everything she's been through. Being sold into slavery at an early age. Coming over here. Not having a family," Abend said. "The resiliency she has is just amazing. The fortitude. Not falling apart. Not being a destroyed soul."

Abend remembers interviewing Hall, then 13, with the help of an Arabic interpreter for the first time when she was being cared for at the Orangewood Children's Home in Orange. Her captors told her to never speak to police, that officers would beat her. She stayed tight-lipped until she was allowed to call her parents in Egypt, and her father ordered her to go back with her captors.

"That's when I saw a spark," Abend said. "She stood up to her dad. She said, 'No! This is not right. What they did to me was not right. You sold me into slavery.'"

At 13, Hall decided that she wanted to stay in the U.S. She hasn't returned to Egypt or seen her family.

In recent years, Hall has spoken to groups across the country about combating human trafficking. She's briefed ICE agents about the emotional and physical trauma victims face.

In 2010-11, federal immigration officials launched 651 investigations into human trafficking, arresting 300 people. According to the U.S. State Department, there are more than 12 million people entrapped in some form of slavery worldwide.

Hall said her dream now is to become a federal agent for ICE to help crack down on human trafficking and free the enslaved.

"That's my top goal," Hall said. "I've been through it. I know I can help."

Los Angeles immigration attorney Angelo Paparelli, who represented Hall pro bono, said that her citizenship application was filed under a special provision for juvenile immigrants and that county officials from the outset supported her decision to stay in the U.S.

"She has literally gone through a living hell, and now she wants to give back," said Paparelli, of the national law firm Seyfarth Shaw. "She's there to give other people courage."

For now, Hall is living in Beaumont in Riverside County and working at the Cabazon outlets as a store supervisor. She's deciding whether to go back to college to finish a degree or to apply for the local police force.

"I'm very excited. I can start my career now," she said. "I can start my life."

[choudoufu]

[fat_chris]

The original post is very disrespectful and in poor form.

You were a black man on a Southern plantation pre-1865?

You were an eight-year old Egyptian girl who was sold to a wealthy couple?

Nope! Not even close.

It's one thing to come on here and complain/feel bad about a lousy employment situation in China.

However, it takes it to a whole new highly inappropriate level to call oneself a slave due to less than favorable working conditions.

-1

OP, please do realize that when you attempt to connect such a wildly inaccurate comparison, it makes it hard to take your post seriously.

Warm regards,
fat_chris

[fat_chris]

But anyway…

Troll? Spam? 419 scam?



Warm regards,
fat_chris

[fat_chris]

[Non Sequitur]

[Simon in Suzhou]

73 hour work week as a teacher in China? LOL. Someone with a graduate degree and certification? LOL

Go back to troll school! You fail.

[Banner41]

Someone screaming for attention that we have all now given. I hope for you find the professional help you need.

[fat_chris]

[fat_chris]

[fat_chris]