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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Well this is what happens when you have no worker safety regulations and the families of the workers are poor Pakistanis and Bengalis that can't file wrongful death lawsuits. America's support of countries like Qatar will be remembered in history like our support of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. These countries treat Pakistanis and Bengalis as de facto slaves.

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Furthermore, they take the workers' passports once the workers get there so they cannot go home. IIRC they are also required to get a permission to leave the country if they want to do so. I really don't understand why FIFA or someone does not intervene.

EDIT: Huh, seems like there is some investigation going on

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/10709821...

but still. Too little, too late.

Yeah I would never travel to a country that requires "exit visas"

From CSA: Confederate States of America:

"Government agents simply told West Coast employers that the Chinese workers that they employed, they now owned. What had been cheap labor now became slave labor."

It's an alternate history of the USA where the South won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJtH_5vcmM

Qatar is one of a few countries which have an exit visa. These workers (en masse) could not leave the country, even if they want. So, yeah, they are slaves.

http://www.moi.gov.qa/PermitForm/PermitFormE.jsp

Exit visas? Wow I never knew such a thing could exist. If you are a citizen of a country you should always be allowed to travel to that country unless you're arrested for committing a crime elsewhere.

It is a way to check you before you leave. Like a security guard checking your bag before you leave a store. Do you owe money, have legal trouble, etc. I am not saying it is right but that is how it is viewed.

Philippines has one. They treat you like criminal when you try to leave.

I read something a couple of years ago about the phenomenon of expats fleeing Dubai after the economic downturn because of the Emirates' harsh treatment of debtors (no bankruptcy, pay up or be jailed). Supposedly, it was common for people to just abandon their cars at the airport and high tail it out of town, never to return. I just found a delightful article highlighting the phenomenon of swanky luxury cars being abandoned at the airport or on the streets. I suspect that this is the main justification for the imposition of an exit visa. But of course the upshot is probably that British financiers end up fleeing their debts anyway, while poor Bangladeshis suffer indentured servitude.

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/05/21/so-in-dubai-the-amo...

You're a bit muddled up here. Tinpots dictatorships of various flavours have required exit visas for years, sometimes even for their own citizens, but Dubai/the UAE does not and has not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_%28document%29#Exit_visas

Seriously, kids. You don't remember the good old days?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Soviet_Unio...

Otherwise, (local politics, human rights aside) one shouldn't cross a frontier without considering the risk of being denied permission to come out again. Whims, national and personal, abound. Check in with your consulate -- remotely, if possible -- if that'll make you feel better.

And I'm not even pararnoid. Been there, done that. (The international travel, and jobs/labor (on and off the books) when it could be scary, that is.)

Crapshoot always. The odds change. Do the math.

Not to belittle desperate migration in search of a better life.

This [1] is the way Nick Cohen put it six months ago:

"The official justification for oppression is, as so often, religious. Migrants and employers are bound by the kafala system – taken from Islamic law on the adoption of children. "Kafala" derives from "to feed". Nourishment is the last thing the system provides, however. It delivers captive labour instead. Migrant workers cannot change jobs without their sponsoring employers' consent. As Human Rights Watch says, if workers walk out, the employers – the adoptive parents – can say they have absconded and the authorities will arrest them.

In order to leave Qatar, migrants must obtain an exit visa from their sponsor. This stipulation means that they can be held hostage if they threaten to sue over a breach of contract."

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/qatar-h...

How would you propose that we "unsupport" them?

Where does the world stand, in general, on this issue? What countries are doing something about it? Most Americans probably can't find Qatar on the map. Finally, shouldn't the United Nations be leading the way on this? Anytime that the US plays "world cop", even if it's "good cop", we still take criticism.

If only the neoconservatives would make themselves useful and lobby to liberate countries like Qatar.

You changed your message about the economy, to which I had an answer. It's petroleum based not tourism. Unless the world agrees to embargo their oil, we can't stop them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Qatar

As for your neocon remark, I don't see any reason why we're going to invade another Middle Eastern country in the near future. The US is probably going back to supporting the current "stable" government.

Not only is the United States not going to invade Qatar, it's going to be loath to make even a peep about human rights abuses. Qatar is host to one of the US's key middle eastern military bases, home of the United States Central Command: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Udeid_Air_Base

So you're saying we already have an easy way to get the necessary troops there?

Well, for one, a decent number of prominent American universities have set up satellite campuses in Doha.

They're money grabs. Bargain priced prostitutes have more self respect.

Do the diplomas from these satellite campuses differentiate themselves from the 'real' universities? In my experience, one of the selling points of satellite campuses is that you get the same diploma from them, such that if you don't tell anybody that you didn't go to the 'real' school, nobody would know.

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