Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05KUWAIT1711
2005-04-26 16:38:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Kuwait
Cable title:  

EMBASSY KUWAIT VALIDATION STUDY ON DOMESTIC

Tags:  CVIS KFRD PHUM KU 
pdf how-to read a cable
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

261638Z Apr 05
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 KUWAIT 001711 

SIPDIS

FOR CA/FPP AND CA/VO/F/P

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: CVIS KFRD PHUM KU
SUBJECT: EMBASSY KUWAIT VALIDATION STUDY ON DOMESTIC
SERVANTS

REF: 04 STATE 172283

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 KUWAIT 001711

SIPDIS

FOR CA/FPP AND CA/VO/F/P

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: CVIS KFRD PHUM KU
SUBJECT: EMBASSY KUWAIT VALIDATION STUDY ON DOMESTIC
SERVANTS

REF: 04 STATE 172283


1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Embassy Kuwait has completed a
nonimmigrant visa validation study on domestic employee B1
visa recipients. The purpose of this study was to measure
the overstay and non-return rates for B1 visa holders with
Kuwaiti sponsors, as well as the B1 sponsors' compliance
with U.S. labor regulations as required by the Fair Labor
Standards Act. Results taken from interviews with the B1
holders themselves, their Kuwaiti sponsors, and Department
of Homeland Security entry and exit records indicate an
overstay rate of nearly 20 per cent among the B1 visa
holders and nearly universal violations of U.S. labor
standards by the Kuwaiti sponsors.


2. (SBU) WHY DO A VALIDATION STUDY ON MAIDS? As a class, B1
domestic employees are some of the least qualified NIV
applicants at post. They are usually young, single, third
country nationals who earn low wages and have little history
of international travel. As economic migrants, maids have
few compelling ties to Kuwait or their countries of origin
and can be subject to difficult working conditions. Local
newspapers often carry accounts of domestic employees
victimized by physical and sexual abuse. Some opt to run
away, often seeking shelter at their embassies. Domestics
have limited protections under Kuwaiti law and the Kuwaiti
labor law does not apply to domestic servants. According to
press reports summarizing Kuwaiti immigration figures,
approximately one in six people living in Kuwait is a
domestic servant (400,000 of 2.645 million.)


3. (SBU) However, domestic servants are an integral part of
the Kuwaiti household. Many Kuwaiti families employ at
least one domestic servant, and Kuwaitis expect to be able
to take their domestics with them when they travel. It is
not uncommon for a Kuwaiti family to withdraw its visa
applications for a summer trip to Disneyworld if the maid's
application is denied. Kuwaitis take refusal of their
maids' visa applications as a personal affront. This can be
an even more contentious issue among high-ranking Kuwaitis,
resulting in official inquiries by the Kuwaiti MFA. B1
domestic visa applications are among the most difficult and
time-consuming NIV applications, especially during the
summer travel season. The interview itself requires
speaking with the maid and the sponsor, as well as reviewing

the contract. Refusals usually result in angry sponsors who
will spend several minutes arguing with consular staff at
different windows. It is also common for sponsors to
reapply for their refused maids several times over the
course of the summer travel season.


4. (SBU) For NIV officers, most B1 applications present at
least one of the two following ineligibilities:

a) most B1 applicants have a difficult time showing strong
ties to a residence outside of the United States, leading to
ineligibilities under INA 214(b); and

b) given the poor wage and labor conditions in Kuwait,
many Kuwaiti sponsors fail to complete a contract in
accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act as required by
9 FAM 41.31. This also results in refusals under 214(b) or
221(g).

These ineligibilities are so prevalent among the B1
applicant population, that even when consular officers
approve B1 applications here, there is a strong suspicion
that the B1 holder may overstay her visa, and that they
employer will not comply with the conditions of the labor
contract. In order to test these suspicions, post decided
to perform a visa validation study on B1 domestics that
would measure B1 overstay rates and sponsor compliance with
the required labor contract.


5. (U) METHODOLOGY: In all applicable areas, this study
followed the methodological guidance suggested in 04 STATE

172283. Deviations from the prescribed methodology were
primarily the result of this study's relatively small sample
size and the utilization of all available cases over the
course of the sample period. With this guidance in mind,
post set out to establish the overstay rates and contract
compliance for third country national B1 visa recipients.
The case parameters are as follows:

Target Range: One Calendar Year: 01 May 2003 - 31 April 2004
(187 approved cases). These dates were selected in order to
give all visa recipients the opportunity to travel, and also
as a further guarantor of objectivity; none of the issuing
NIV officers during this period are still at post.

Number of visas issued per month per target period: Average
15.75

May 32
June 40
Jul 25
Aug 17
Sep 15
Oct 6
Nov 4
Dec 7
Jan 14
Feb 0
Mar 8
Apr 17

Maximum anticipated percentage of overstays: 10 percent of
cases, or 19 total. (For the purpose of this study,
overstays include visa non-returns as well. As it happened
in the final results, there were very few overstays at all.
Most B1 visa holders who overstay simply don't leave.)
Maximum anticipated percentage of contract compliance: 50
percent.

Proposed sample size per month: All approved cases

Random Starting Point: 01 May 2003

Sample intervals employed in sample selection: 1 (100
percent sample rate of all issued visas)


6. (U) Having established the above mentioned parameters for
case selection, post created a plan for collecting results:

Pull applications of issued B1 applicants from post records.

Enter applicant data into an Excel spreadsheet, listing visa
holders by name, nationality, date of birth, sex, visa
number and issuance date. In order to test B1 sponsor
compliance with U.S. labor regulations, post also added an
additional column to record the visa holder's reported
monthly salary in the United States.

Contact B1 holders by telephone to establish the following
results: confirmed overstay, returned to host or other
country, inconclusive results (and why),nonuse of visa,
suspected fraud, and for those that did travel, monthly
salary in the US.

Follow up: send spreadsheet to DHS for confirmation on visa
holder travel records, including overstay and non-return.


7. (SBU) TESTING RESULTS: TRAVEL HISTORY AND OVERSTAY RATES
BY TELEPHONIC INTERVIEW. In December 2004, post NIV FSN
staff began calling B1 visa holders to obtain information on
their travel and salary history in the United States. The
NIV section chief monitored many of these phone calls. The
most striking result of these conversations was the obvious
unreliability of this method of research. In many of the
telephone calls, Kuwaiti sponsors refused to allow their
domestic employees to speak with the Embassy. In cases where
the domestics could speak on the phone, their sponsors were
often heard in the back ground, feeding the "correct" answer
to the domestic, or ordering her not to answer certain
questions. The fact that so many of these interviews were
conducted under obvious coercion makes these initial results
highly suspect. The fact that the answers themselves were
unverifiable, in post's opinion, weakens the reliability of
results obtained solely by telephonic inquiry to an even
greater degree.

Results of "confirmed overstay," and "returned to host or
other country" would be impossible to verify by telephone
inquiry. Post found several cases where sponsors claimed
their domestic employees had returned to their home country,
or were no longer in their employ, when DHS records later
showed the same individuals had actually never departed the
US. Post also suspects that in some instances, employers
forced other household staff to pose as the B1 visa holder
during the Embassy's telephonic inquiry. Given the
contentious sponsor responses to Embassy inquiries, the
coercive environment under which many by visa holders did
respond to inquiry, and the ultimate unverifiability of
telephonic responses to Embassy inquiries, post would have
to categorize so many of these inquiries as "inconclusive"
or "suspected fraud" so as to undermine the results of the
entire study.


8. (SBU) TESTING RESULTS: TRAVEL HISTORY AND OVERSTAY RATES
BY DHS RECORDS. Fortunately, the DHS district office in
Rome was able to provide post with travel records for all
187 B1 visa holders in post's study. This is the cavalry
coming to the rescue: the DHS records quite literally saved
this study. For the reasons discussed above, the telephonic
records were unreliable. The DHS travel records however
provided hard evidence for the B1 holders' travel history
and overstays, and when compared to the results of the
telephonic inquiries, also showed a pattern of fraud and
misrepresentation on the part of their Kuwaiti sponsors.
Both sets of records, when used together, were actually
quite useful. However, post is using the DHS records as the
actual account of the B1 visa holder travel history. Upon
receipt of these results, post counted raw and revised
numbers for travel and overstay rates. Post also ran for
overstay rates based on nationality, age and sex. The
initial results for our 178 B1 issuances are listed below:

Confirmed Overstays: 25
Departed United States, or in Status: 135
Inconclusive / Did Not Use Visa: 48
Suspected Fraud: 12


9. (U) This is a modification of the response categories we
originally intended to use as described in para. 4, though
post feels these response parameters more accurately
describe the results of our inquiries. A brief explanation
of these response categories follows:

a) Confirmed overstays are all cases counted as "Confirmed
Overstay" or "No Departure" in DHS records. There are a
total of 25 cases in this category consisting of four (4)
overstays, and twenty one (21) no departures.

b) Departed United States, or in status: DHS records
indicate that these visa holders traveled to the United
States and departed within the time allotted by DHS agents
at the port of entry. The "return to Kuwait or other
country" was dropped from this provision because: first, it
is impossible to tell where the traveler returned to, and
second, because for the purpose of this study, we are only
concerned with their travel to the United States.

c) Inconclusive / Did Not Use Visa: DHS travel records
showed "No Record" next to 48 listed B1 visa holders in our
study. Discounting the possibility of widespread failure of
DHS entry-exit tracking systems, we can only assume that
these individuals never used their visas and did not travel
to the United States. In any case, the results are
inconclusive.

d) Suspected Fraud: These consist of twelve (12) cases
where Kuwaiti sponsors indicated in telephonic interviews
that the B1 domestic had returned to Kuwait or her home
country, while DHS records later showed no departure from
the United States.


10. (SBU) RAW OVERSTAY RATES: The final results based on DHS
records indicate that there were 25 confirmed overstays out
of 178 issued B1 visas, an overstay rate of 14 per cent.
When we discard the 48 inconclusive cases and look only at
overstay rates for confirmed travelers, we see 25 out of
130, and overstay rate of 19 per cent. This is
significantly higher than the 10 per cent we anticipated
before conducting the study.


11. (SBU) OVERSTAY RATES BY NATIONALITY, AGE AND SEX:

OVERSTAY NATIONALITIES. Post also broke down the travel and
overstay rates by nationality, age and sex. Looking at the
three largest applicant groups, Indians, Filipinas, and Sri
Lankans, we see the following results. The attendant numbers
respectively list number of visas issued, number of
confirmed travelers, number of overstays, and overstay
percentage for confirmed travelers:

Indian: 71-47-8: 17 per cent
Philippines: 64-51-8: 15 per cent
Sri Lankan: 20-13-4: 30 per cent

The overstay rates for Indians and Filipinas, while higher
than the 10 per cent initially expected, is roughly in line
with the overall numbers for post's B1 population during the
sample period. The overstay rate for Sri Lankans, while
considerably higher than the Indian and Filipina results, is
taken from a small enough statistical sample (only 13
confirmed travelers) to discourage any broader conclusions.

OVERSTAY AGE: The study's greatest surprise came with the
age of the confirmed overstays. While we expected most
overstays to be in their early to mid twenties, the average
age of overstaying B1's was actually closer to 40. Removing
one outlier who was born in 1937, the average date of birth
for the overstaying B1's was 1965. There was no clear mode
year of birth; two overstays were born in 1952 and 1965
each, with the remaining twenty samples evenly distributed
between 1952 and 1979. The median year of birth for our
overstay population was also 1965.

OVERSTAY SEX: All overstays were female. However with only
eight males among the original 178 visas holders, we would
want to see a larger male sample before drawing any
conclusions about a female proclivity to overstay.


11. (SBU) TESTING RESULTS: B1 SPONSOR COMPLIANCE WITH THE
FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT. 9 FAM 41.31 requires that foreign
nationals sponsoring personal employees for B1 travel to the
United States comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act with
regard to payment of wages, overtime compensation and tax
laws. The FAM also requires the sponsor to provide for the
employee's transportation, food, accommodation, and medical
treatment in the United States. Prior to visa issuance, the
Embassy requires sponsors and their employees to sign a
contract guaranteeing employee rights and privileges while
working in the United States. This contract specifically
describes minimum salary requirements regarding the
prevailing wage in five major American cities, and advises
sponsors that their employees are to keep their own
passports with them at all times in the United States.
Given the typical 80 hour work week performed by most
domestics here, the Consular Section for the purpose of this
study figures a salary of about 600 USD per month, in
addition to all food, transportation and lodging costs, to
be in keeping with the minimum requirements of U.S. labor
regulations. Given the wide discrepancy between Kuwaiti and
American labor standards (domestic employees earn an
average salary of about 160 USD per month; sponsors keep
their employees' passports; legal protections against
physical and sexual abuse are inadequate),post was eager to
follow up on Kuwaiti sponsor pledges to adhere to U.S. labor
standards. The results of this inquiry were discouraging,
and in and of themselves, may call for a re-evaluation of
post policy on B1 visa applications.


12. (SBU) Post telephonic interviews in December 2004 showed
that of the 102 respondents (either sponsors or the B1
domestic),85 were paid less than 600 USD per month, the
study's minimum standard for compliance with the Fair Labor
Standards Act. For Kuwaiti sponsors, this translates into
an 83 per cent rate for noncompliance with US labor
regulations, significantly higher than the 50 per cent
originally expected. Furthermore, given the difficulties
described in paragraphs 5 and 6 in conducting these
interviews, the threat of coercion under which the B1
holders themselves were obviously responding, and the
evidence that a number sponsors were lying about their
employees' illegal immigration to the United States, we
suspect that sponsor noncompliance with prevailing wage laws
in the United States is actually closer to 100 per cent.


13. (SBU) CONCLUSIONS: The results of this visa validation
study support two conclusions: a) the overstay rate for B1
domestics issued at Kuwait and traveling to the United
States is nearly 20 per cent, roughly one in five. b) Among
Kuwaiti sponsors of B1 domestic laborers in the United
States, there is nearly universal noncompliance with United
States labor laws.


14. (SBU) RECOMMENDATIONS: In light of this new evidence,
post intends to take a number of steps to decrease the non-
return rate for B1 domestics, and to ensure compliance with
U.S. labor standards while in the United States.

a) Post will create a "blacklist" of Kuwaiti sponsors whose
previously sponsored domestic employees have violated their
visa status, or who themselves have failed to comply with US
labor regulations as stipulated in the agreement they signed
prior to B1 visa issuance. This will be accomplished
through the creation of a Word document maintained at post
including the names of the Kuwaiti sponsors to be manually
checked by an adjudicating consular officer at the time of a
B1 application. Sponsors included on this list will be
unable to sponsor future B1 visa applications.

b) When adjudicating B1 applications, post should consider
revising standards for what constitutes compelling ties to
overcome the presumption of immigrant intent. While our
study did show that overstaying B1's tend to be around 40
years of age, neither nationality nor gender proved to be
useful indicators in predicting immigrant intent. Post
should return to the applications for the overstaying B1's
and look for any other commonalities: travel history,
salary, time with employer and family status are probably
good places to start.

c) The most challenging repercussion of this study regards
sponsor obligations to the employee's fair wage and working
conditions. 9 FAM 41.31 N9.3-3 states that employers must
sign a contract guaranteeing B1 worker prevailing wages and
accommodation. Applications which fail to complete this
contract may be refused under Section 214(b) or 212(a)(4) of
the INA. The results of this study clearly suggest that
Kuwaiti sponsors routinely and almost universally complete
this agreement in bad faith. Post has always suspected that
these agreements are disregarded once the sponsor and
employee arrive in the United States, but to continue
issuing B1 visas in light of this study's evidence would be
to turn a blind eye to serial violations of U.S. labor laws
and FAM regulations. Conversely, refusing all B1
applications out of hand is hardly realistic either.

One possible solution might be to require salary statements
and bank records from B1 applicants. As most domestic
employees in Kuwait are paid irregularly and in cash, this
would automatically remove most applications from
consideration. Visa officers' experience on the line,
however, indicates that there is a small subset of domestic
employees here who are paid well and at regular intervals.
These applicants are usually able to show some kind of
record indicating regular payment of salary. They also tend
to have several years service with their employers and a
history of international travel. Unfortunately, such
applicant's represent a very small portion of B1 applicants,
probably around 5 per cent. Raising the standards to
overcome immigrant intent to something closer to these
levels, however, is probably the only way to decrease post's
B1 overstay rate and to ensure cooperation with U.S. labor
laws.
LeBaron