State Department adds restrictions to diplomats bringing servants into the U.S.
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
November 20, 2009
Diplomats below the rank of minister no longer will be able to bring domestic servants into the United States without being able to show they can afford to pay them a prevailing wage, U.S. State Department officials told anti-human-trafficking groups during a closed meeting Thursday, The Examiner has learned.
The restriction is just one in a series of new guidelines diplomats will be required to follow if they want to bring laborers into the United States. Since 2000, there have been at least 42 documented allegations of diplomats engaged in the human trafficking of their servants, many in the Washington area, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
Chief of Protocol Capricia Marshall, who accredits foreign diplomats and arranges diplomatic visits to the White House, and Undersecretary for Global Affairs Maria Otero informed the anti-human-trafficking groups of the changes Thursday.
The new guidelines, which also require diplomats to pay their servants using checks or direct deposit so payments can be traced, have already been issued to consular offices, a State Department source said. The guidelines will also require embassy chiefs to personally approve the servants their employees wish to bring with them.
"It's encouraging to see State Department officials beyond the human trafficking office mobilizing to fight abuse of domestic servants by diplomats, which is human trafficking," said Mark Lagon, former director of the department's human trafficking office and current head of anti-human-trafficking nonprofit Polaris Project. Lagon was one of more than a dozen nonprofit representatives who attended Thursday's meeting.
But, Lagon said, "the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Will there be any action by State if it is found that diplomats are complicit in human trafficking in the future?"
In July, the State Department said in a report required by Congress that it would place the onus of monitoring the relationship between diplomats and the household workers they've often abused on the embassy chiefs who have in some cases turned a blind eye. The report also indicated the department remained inflexible on diplomatic immunity, which has hampered Justice Department investigations into abuse.
"In light of the immunity enjoyed by diplomatic personnel," the report said, "the department is not in a position to directly monitor the actual daily treatment of domestic workers by diplomats."
