“SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - El Salvador is discussing a deal with Qatar under which Salvadoran migrants facing the loss of their right to stay in the United States could live and work temporarily in the Middle Eastern country, the government of the Central American nation said on Tuesday.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said that as of September 2019, it would eliminate the temporary protected status, or TPS, that allows some 200,000 Salvadorans to live in the United States without fear of deportation.
Presidential communications chief Eugenio Chicas said El Salvador was in talks to see how Salvadorans could be employed in Qatar, a wealthy country of some 2.6 million people that is scheduled to host the soccer World Cup in 2022.
“The kingdom of Qatar ... has held out the possibility of an agreement with El Salvador whereby Salvadoran workers could be brought across in phases (to Qatar),” Chicas told reporters.
After an unspecified period, the Salvadorans would return home, Chicas added, without saying how many workers the program could encompass.”
I suppose these deportees, many of whom fled El Salvador to the U.S. in the first place to escape violence and exploitation, will euphemistically be called “migrant” workers whose conditions are detailed in this December, 2016 report by The Guardian:
“Qatar’s kafala system, which is used to recruit the majority of its workforce from countries including India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, has prompted international outcry because it prevents workers from changing jobs or leaving the country without a permit. It is alleged to have resulted in modern-day slavery for some workers.
Qatar said on Monday it was abolishing kafala and that it was “enormously grateful to the millions of workers who have come to Qatar to build our nation’s infrastructure during this period of rapid change”.
But James Lynch, deputy director for global issues at Amnesty, said the new law “may get rid of the word ‘sponsorship’ but it leaves the same basic system intact”.
“It is good that Qatar has accepted that its laws were fuelling abuse but these inadequate changes will continue to leave workers at the mercy of exploitative bosses,” he said.”
To be sure Qatar last year eliminated the kafala system, which amounted to little more than forced labor — with little protections to the “migrant” workers.
But any reforms are largely cosmetic says Lynch:
“For a migrant worker, the prospect of being tied to one employer for up to five years, unable to change employer to secure better conditions or escape poor treatment or abuse, is not greatly different from their current position and will not significantly reduce the risk of coercion of workers by their employers,”
How convenient for Qatar, desperate to complete its construction for the 2022 soccer World Cup, that the maladministration is generously supplying them with up to 200,000 laborers just in time for the final push….
I wonder what drumpf’s cut will be?
But wait!
Aren’t these jobs that could be going to hardworking Amurikans?