In 2005, a small, fly-by-night contracting company operating under the name Million Express Manpower, posted a listing in Northern Thailand advertising the availability of several lucrative American jobs. They promised the potential workers $8. US per hour PLUS a valid US visa. However, what they delivered was far from anything they’d promised.
Chinnawat Koompeemay and 29 other men from small villages in Thailand with limited English abilities, all answered the ad expecting they had finally found a way to help their impoverished families with money AND legal US residency. Million Express Manpower told the men they would need to pay 25,000 Thai Bhat ($11,000 US Dollars) to secure the employment. Believing the US visa alone was well worth the fee, Koompeemay put up his home and farm as collateral and took out a high interest loan from Thai loan sharks just to raise the money. He and the other men were then transported to North Carolina on agricultural guest worker visas to begin work. Once inside the US, Million Express Manpower confiscated the worker’s passports and visas and the men were relocated to New Orleans to work on a Hurricane Katrina damaged hotel, where they were forced to live among polluted water as the walls crumbled around them.
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There was no heat, no electricity, no fresh water, and no food. The men were forced to trap pigeons and cook them over a make-shift fire just to survive. And what’s worse, the men soon learned they were also working for no pay. They were warned if they tried to leave they’d be immediately arrested, while company reps brandished guns to reinforce the point they were serious. The men were forced to stay and work against their will inside the condemned hotel, thousands of miles and a continent away from their families, with no food, no housing, no money, and no way out.
Sadly, this story of human trafficking is not unique. There are reportedly 200,000 currently in some form of “Modern Day Slavery” in the US today. Some die as slaves. Some are never reunited with their families. Fortunately for Chinnawat Koompeemay and his 29 comrades, theirs was a happy ending. While being transferred back to North Carolina, the men escaped and went directly to the US government. They have been granted permission to stay in the US with a special T-visa, given to victims of human trafficking. Koompeemay’s family members have now joined him in the US. But they are living a secret life in an undisclosed location, in fear for their lives from representatives of the Million Express Manpower company, as well as the Thai loan sharks still looking for their original investment.
The truth is_the longer I live the more I'm convinced there are a lot of people out there who are TRULY_EVIL_smh."And the world keeps on turnin" ~Eryka Badu