Social problems. Human rights.

 

Text 1.

Migrants in Russia.

 

St. Petersburg police detained between 128 and 180 migrants from Central Asia on Wednesday who lived on the abandoned territory of the city’s Krasny Trugolnik rubber factory.

Police organized the raid of the plant as a part of a murder investigation.

Law enforcement officials were investigating the murder of a 47-year-old woman committed the night of August 12. The woman died in a hospital as a result of multiple blows to her head and body that she suffered from two men of Asian appearance after the three had been drinking together.

“In order to find the people who committed the crime, the investigation department of Admiralteisky district, the district’s police and migration service organized the raid,” the prosecutor’s general’s office report said. “As a result of the raid, police detained about 180 migrants who arrived from Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan.”

According to the report, the detained migrants had no jobs and were residing in unsanitary conditions on premises not equipped for living.

Meanwhile, St. Petersburg’s Federal Migration Service Board said that police detained 128 migrants during the raid, all of whom had their fingerprints taken. Only three of them did not have permission to work in Russia, the Migration Service said, Interfax reported.

Wednesday’s raid is the latest in a series of detainments of large numbers of immigrants. It was reported August 19 that Moscow police had detained more than 300 illegal migrants from Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The migrants were living in condemned apartment buildings on Prospect Mira and Ulitsa Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya in the center of Moscow. On the same day, migration officials confirmed that police had discovered 65 illegal migrants from Vietnam living in a forest outside of Moscow in the course of police actions on July 30 and August 6.

In recent years, Russia has become one of the biggest centers of migration in the world after the United States, according to a 2008 World Bank survey.

According to the World Bank report, about 12 million guest workers arrive in Russia annually, whereas 11 million leave Russia. Every year migrants send home more than 11 billion dollars, and experts say Russia’s dependence on migrant labor will continue to grow through the next decade.

Acсording to a report by one of the newspapers, 40 percent of migrants work in construction, 30 percent in trade, 10 percent in industry, seven percent in agriculture, five percent in transport.

 

 

Words to be memorized:

 

To detain – detainment – задерживать, арестовывать; – задержание, арест

Raid – внезапное нападение, облава, рейд, набег

Abandon – покидать, оставлять, бросать

Murder – убийство

To investigate – investigation – расследовать - расследование

Law Enforcement – обеспечение правопорядка, правоохранительные органы

Multiple – множественные

To commit a crime – совершить преступление

Prosecutor – обвинитель, прокурор

Premises – здание с прилегающими постройками и участком земли, недвижимость Condemned – забракованный, признанный негодным

To condemn – осуждать, обвинять

To confirm – подтверждать

In the course of – в ходе

Annually – ежегодно

To depend – dependence – зависеть – зависимость

According to – согласно, в соответствии с….

 

Tasks:

 

I. Questions:

1) Why did the police organize a raid in the Krasny Treygolnik’s premises?

2) How many migrants were detained?

3) What was the result of the raid?

4) What conditions do many migrants live in?

5) Do all of them have permission for work?

6) What countries do they come from?

7) Does Russia depend on their labour?

8) What fields do immigrants work in?

 

 

II. Translate from Russian into English:

1) Для того, чтобы найти человека, совершившего преступление, нужно снять отпечатки его пальцев.

2) Федеральная Миграционная служба озабочена антисанитарными условиями, в которых живут многие иммигранты в России.

3) Прокуратура подтвердила, что число преступлений среди иммигрантов велико.

4) Иммигранты живут в зданиях, признанных непригодными для жилья, или в лесу, они вынуждены платить чиновникам правоохранительных органов и миграционных служб огромные деньги, чтобы получить разрешение на жительство и работу.

5) По сведениям, собранным Мировым Банком, Россия занимает второе после США место по количеству иммигрантов.

6) Такие отрасли как строительство, торговля, промышленность, общественный транспорт зависят от труда иммигрантов.

7) Ежегодно из России вывозятся около 11 миллиардов долларов.

 

 

Text 2.

Summer Workers Cheated.

 

The young workers came from Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, spending their own money to get to summer resort towns desperate for labor. Many of them wound up cheated out of wages and overtime pay, working jobs that violated child labor laws or docked pay to cover room and board.

A New York state investigation last year found that nearly 200 foreign workers were cheated by several companies in an upstate resort town. The state ordered the businesses to repay the employees, plus interest, and pay fines.

Some of the companies are appealing the ruling and more than three months later, about 180 students who worked for the companies between 2002 and 2006 are still owed $103,000 in pay, interest, and fines.

Nationally, The Southern Poverty Law Center found “legal guest workers” in the US – in some cases students – are at risk for abuse and exploitation. A report issued in 2007 by the center said many workers were promised higher wages or were given fewer weeks of work than promised.

In 2006, the most recent data available from the US Department of State, about 600,000 guest workers were issued US visas, not including highly trained workers, athletes and entertainers.

In many cases workers were unable to dig out of the debt – ranging from $500 to $10.000 – incurred just to get to the United States, according to the report.

Shu-Ting “Sandy” Chang, a 22-year –old college student from Taiwan, said she travelled to St Louis in the summer of 2006 to work at a Six Flags amusement park. There, she lived with three other students in one room – instead of the two-person quarters promised to her – far from work. She and other international workers took a bus that ran twice a day – at 10.30 a.m. and 10 p.m.

“Even if we got off work in the afternoon, all we could do was wait, or people just kept working,” Chang said. She earned about $1,000 as a deep-fry cook, after her title was described as a hostess. It cost her $2,200 to get to the USA, plus rent. She described the experience as “painful”.

Elizabeth Gotway, a spokeswoman for Six Flags, said the company met with some students who approached the company with complaints and misunderstandings. “At the end of those meetings and talking with them, we were able to address all of their concerns, and if we were not able to change them or fix them, then we were able to better communicate with them and they could understand why certain things could not be changed. They are a valuable resource for us as a company, so we want them to be happy,” she said.

 

Words to be memorized:

Despair – desperate – отчаяние, упадок духа; – безнадежный, бесперспективный

Resort – курорт

To wind up – кончать

To cheat – обманывать

Overtime work – сверхурочная работа

To violate – нарушать, попирать

To dock – сокращать, урезать

Upstate – северная часть штата

Interest – капиталовложения, процент, доля, прибыль

Fine – взыскание, штраф, пеня

To appeal – обжаловать, подавать апелляционную жалобу

Ruling – судебное решение, постановление

Abuse – оскорбление, жестокое обращение, злоупотребление

Available – доступный, имеющийся в наличии

To dig out – находить, изыскивать, выкапывать

To issue – издавать

To incur - следовать из, подвергаться

Quarters – жилище, помещение, квартира

Rent – аренда

To approach – обращаться (с просьбой, предложением, жалобой)

To address – принимать меры, реагировать

Tasks:

 

I. Questions:

1) Why did the young workers come to summer resort towns in the USA?

2) Why were they upset?

3) What was the New York state decision on the case?

4) Did all companies agree with the decision?

5) Why did the guest workers fall into debt?

6) How did Six Flags amusement center deal with the students’ complaint?

 

II. Translate from Russian into English:

1) Молодежь из стран Восточной Европы, Азии и Латинской Америки ежегодно приезжает в США, чтобы заработать денег и усовершенствовать свой английский.

2) Среди «сезонных» рабочих много студентов, артистов, спортсменов и даже высококвалифицированных работников.

3) Работодатели часто обманывают своих подчиненных, платя им меньше денег и заставляя их работать сверхурочно.

4) Рабочие обратились с жалобой на руководство компании.

5) Правоохранительные органы, расследовавшие дело, обязали компанию заплатить огромный штраф и выплатить рабочим зарплату.

6) Билет в США стоил больше, чем я смогла заработать, сказала девушка из Тайваня.

7) Когда я жил в Москве, мы вдвоем жили в квартире.

8) Летом цена на аренду жилья в курортных городах гораздо выше чем зимой.

9) Представители компании заявили, что подадут апелляционную жалобу на власти

штата.

10) Власть никак не отреагировала на тревоги и жалобы населения.

 

Text 3.