No Shame In Using Immunity To Abuse Domestic Workers

Edith Mendoza found a job as a domestic worker and nanny in the home of a German diplomat and his wife in New York to be able to support her children in the Philippines. The job post had mentioned 35 to 40 hours of work per week, but instead, she worked 90 hours per week, without any breaks, and she wasn’t getting overtime pay. Her health started to deteriorate.

At Damayan, a migrant workers’ organisation, she met Sherile Pahagas, also from the Philippines, who had worked 100 hours a week for the same family for less than minimum wage.

Martina Vandenberg, the founder and president of the Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center told journalist Ariel Ramchandani: “Diplomats feel no shame in using their immunity as a shield.”

Vandenberg found that many diplomatic trafficking cases are never criminally prosecuted. She also thinks that possibly fewer civil cases are filed than reflect the problem, as victims of trafficking are unlikely to come forward.

Domestic workers often have little legal recourse—the industry is almost entirely unregulated. They work in isolation from other workers, and in close quarters with their employers.

In cases of abuse of domestic workers on diplomat-sponsored and other work visas, the situation is made worse by the fact that the visa is tied to the employer: the employee has nowhere to go.

The Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations, and the diplomat's attorneys urged the court to stop proceedings because they lacked jurisdiction, and the case was dismissed.

The judge explained that the dismissal was on the narrow grounds of diplomatic immunity. He also wrote: “If the allegations of the complaint are true, defendants’ conduct was abhorrent and intolerable.”

Damayan continues to ask the diplomat to pay the allegedly stolen wages and attorneys’ fees, for a total of over $360,000. “We also want diplomatic immunity to be dismissed as well as a public apology because he did this twice that we know of.”