Illegal Venezuelans in Miami Exploited and Threatened of Deportation

Valeria Omar, aged 21, arrived in the United States to work on November 4, 2016 aimed at supporting her family in Venezuela. Ever since, she has worked selling phones at a mall in Miami until last September when she accepted a proposal from a Superior Staffing with an offer of a better salary.

With a better income, she thought, it could help improve the quality of life of her family. The job proposal consisted of 12-hour days demolishing walls and cleaning debris in two hotels  affected by the Hurricane Irma in the Florida Keys.

But she never imagined that after a month of work she, and at least 20 undocumented immigrants who made the denunciation to MundoHispánico, would end up without receiving thousands of dollars of wages owed.

"I left my job to go with them because they had offered me good money, I worked every day without stopping for a month in the demolition of walls and cleaning, but the paychecks had no funds," said Omar said, while showing the checks.

The workers were recruited by Daniel Paz, owner of the company Superior Staffing. At the same time, Superior Staffing had been subcontracted by the Cotton Global Disaster Solution company, which directed the projects in the two hotels, according to Cotton spokesman James Scaife, who said: "We have paid for all services to Superior Staffing, we did not know about the accusations of the staff, particularly on the lack of payment to the workers ".

But according to a specialist, these cases are often with natural disasters such as the passage of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida or Katrina in New Orleans.

A study led in 2006 by the New Orleans Workers Center for Social Justice, after the devastating passage of Hurricane Katrina, 61 percent of the workers surveyed were victims of wage theft and subjected to work in unhealthy conditions.

"I have participated in reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Katrina, in Tropical Storm Allison, Rita and almost every disaster in the United States." One of the key problems facing any worker is wage theft, "said Rodolfo Elizalde, managing director of the Faith and Justice Worker Center organization.

Another similar study conducted by the Berkeley University of California, shows that the treatment of workers with documents and undocumented is different, among the undocumented respondents only 20 percent were paid their wages on time.

Fear of "La Migra"

The 20 workers who spoke with MundoHispánico say they were "mocked" by Superior Staffing, but have not filed a complaint for fear that the owner of the company meets its threat to deliver them to immigration. (See image below).

"Mr. Daniel Paz, owner of Superior Staffing, threatened us with calling immigration and denouncing us, I am a professional and I did not mind working collecting debris to earn my money," said Kassandra Cruz, 28, a Venezuelan journalist who arrived this year. to the United States in search of the 'American dream', but ran into this nightmare.

MundoHispánico tried to contact Daniel Paz by telephone and by text, on December 8 and 10 to obtain his version of the complaint.

Five days after the initial call to Daniel Paz, he contacted MundoHispánico to question the investigation of this case. In an irritated tone he assured: "you do not have to be calling my client (Cotton Global Disaster Solution) you do not know what happened".

At the moment he was asked to explain what happened before the cameras of MundoHispánico, he rejected the request, noting that the money "was stolen by other people". When questioned about why he used the migrant status of the workers to threaten them, Paz hung up the phone.

Another former employee of Superior Staffing, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said: "Daniel Paz is not going to pay, from the beginning there were problems, not even the rooms wanted to pay, he wanted to put 12 workers to sleep in one" .

"They owe me $ 638 from a bottomless check they gave me, they put me to sleep tight in the same beds as men I did not even know," said Anniheris Saavedra, another 30-year-old Venezuelan, who for a week worked demolishing walls with hammers and other tools

Currently, three quarters of Latinos work in jobs where they are exposed to violations in the payment of the minimum wage and the lack of overtime payment, according to the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA for its acronym in English).

Those affected have created a WhatsApp group to be able to organize themselves and try to find a solution in their own ways. They hope that some pro-immigrant organization will be interested in the case and will provide them with advice to file a class action against Superior Staffing, through which they can recover the money for which they worked hard.

VIDEO Illegal Venezuelans Underpaid and Under Threat of Deportation in Miami

By: MundoHispanico

English Version: María Eugenia Acero Colomine acerocolomine@gmail.com