Anatomy of a Post-Katrina Scam
News: H-2B visa abuses trapped guest workers in "modern slavery."
August 21, 2007
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February 2006
Daniel Castellanos Contreras, 37, a skilled engineer in Lima, Peru, inquires about an ad in a local paper calling for workers in New Orleans.
March 2006
Contreras undergoes a series of interviews with a Peruvian hiring agency. They paint a rosy picture: first-class accommodations while working construction to rebuild hotels damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Pay is to begin at $7.70 an hour for 40 hours a week, plus ample overtime. Meals are included. Contreras signs on, borrowing nearly a year's Peruvian earnings to cover costs, which include $2,100 in application and embassy fees and $1,500 in airfare.
April 2006
Contreras bids his wife and two young children farewell and flies to New Orleans. Upon arrival he is greeted by a representative of Decatur Hotels, one of the largest luxury hotel chains in Louisiana. He is told to forget everything he heard in Peru about the job and the working conditions and is presented with a contract some 50 pages long, entirely in English, and told to sign each page. When Contreras says he does not understand the legalese, he is told that if he does not sign he does not have a job. Under the terms of the H-2B temporary worker visa that got him to the United States, Contreras can work only for Decatur Hotels for the ten-month tenure of his visa. After that he must leave the United States.
Contreras is taken to his living quarters: barracks-style housing at the severely damaged Midtown Hotel, a dingy budget hotel that was snapped up after Katrina by F. Patrick Quinn III, owner of Decatur Hotels, to house workers. Contreras' room, which he is to share with three other workers he does not know, is infested with roaches and rats. There is no television and no phone and the bathroom ceiling has collapsed. There is no kitchen or laundry room on site for the workers.
May 2006
Contreras is assigned a job at the front desk of the hotel where he was living. His co-workers, many of whom had also been hired for construction work, are working as janitors.
By mid-May, with the New Orleans Jazz Festival come and gone and temperatures on the rise, tourism is drying up. Contreras' hours are cut. The free daily hot meal disappears and Contreras must buy his meals from a street vendor.
June 2006
His hours are cut again. Struggling to keep up with his $600-a-month loan repayment, he renegotiates a lower monthly payment at a higher rate.
Contreras tries to get a government-issued ID, to which temporary workers are legally entitled. In order to qualify for the ID, he must show a copy of a form called an I-129, provided by his employer. Decatur refuses to provide a copy of the form to Contreras or any of his co-workers.
According to Decatur Hotels policy, each day of work missed results in a penalty. After three penalties you lose your job. Contreras misses a day of work trying to get his ID and receives his first penalty.
July 2006
After three failed meetings where Decatur management has either failed to show up or has refused to talk, Contreras and the other workers request a meeting with Patrick Quinn. After a month of letters, emails, and phone calls from Contreras and the others, he agrees to a meeting. At the meeting Quinn is noncommittal and nothing is resolved.
Contreras misses a day of work to attend the meeting with Quinn and receives his second penalty. He is moved to the night shift and his hours are cut.
