13 Years After Sweatshop, Workers Gain Citizenship

But then she was freed, and as a shocked public learned of slavery in its midst, the Thai labourers were flooded with American generosity: churchgoers offered shelter, community advocates offered English lessons and job tips, lawyers fought to win work permits and legal status for the group.

Now, exactly 13 years to the day the Thai labourers won their freedom, Clinton's American journey came full circle as the former slave labourer acquired the full rights of US citizenship by taking the oath of allegiance to her new nation.

"I'm an American, and this is my home now!" said Clinton, 39, as she waved a miniature American flag at the ceremony on Wednesday, when more than 3,600 new citizens were scheduled to be sworn in by day's end.

Another former slave labourer, Sukanya Chuai Ngan, was also granted citizenship Wednesday. The two women are among dozens of the slave labourers who have acquired citizenship this year or expect to do so imminently. More than 40 of them gathered on Sunday to celebrate with the Asian Pacific American Legal Centre, which successfully fought for a US$4 million (Bt135 million) settlement from manufacturers and retailers for the exploitation and won an uphill battle to gain legal status for the workers.

"Because of their courage, they were able to take what was a horrific experience and emerge from it as victors," said the legal centre's Julie Su, their lead attorney for 13 years. "I'm really proud of them, but I'm also proud of America because this nation opened its arms to them and showed its best ideals of freedom and human rights."

The case drew international media attention, blazed new legal paths in immigration and labour law, paved the way for legislation offering visas for victims of human trafficking and is memorialised in an exhibit on sweatshops in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The case marked the first time in federal court that garment workers successfully held manufacturers and retailers responsible for the actions of their labour contractor, Su said.

Ultimately, law-enforcement officers arrested eight operators of a Chinese-Thai garment sweatshop in an early morning raid in August 1995 and freed 72 Thai immigrants, some of whom had been held captive for three years.

It was the shocking nature of modern-day slavery in such a nondescript American neighbourhood that so riveted the nation, Su said.

As they celebrated their journeys to citizenship on Sunday with American flags and certificates as "American heroes" from the Asian legal centre, the former captives reminisced, often tearfully, over their trials.

Most of them said they came from impoverished farming families and had headed to the metropolis of Bangkok to find sewing jobs. There, they met labour contractors who promised them good jobs in America and monthly pay of $1,000 - nearly 10 times what some were earning in Thailand.

They were told they would work 8am to 6pm, with weekends off to see the glamorous sights of Los Angeles.

But the reality was vastly different.

Buppha Chaemchoi, 37, said she was shocked to arrive and realise she would sleep crammed in one bedroom on the floor with nine others. The windows had been boarded up, she said, allowing virtually no sunlight. Her captors told her that if she tried to escape, brutal US police would shave her head and stamp her scalp with marks of disgrace, she said.

Chuai Ngan, 47, said she was also intimidated with threats that her family would be harmed and their home in Thailand burned down if she attempted to leave.

"It made me worry and want to stay inside and just wait for my three-year contract to end," Chaemchoi said.

Not all captives were content to accept their fate, though.

Win Chuai Ngan, the 51-year-old husband of Sukanya, was the first to escape. As one of the few male labourers, he said he was allowed to go outside to take out the trash and help move sewing machines and other heavy supplies into the complex.

One day, he said, he saw a Thai newspaper in the trash, surreptitiously tore out the phone number for a Thai temple and kept it hidden in his pocket. In November of 1992, he made his move - jumping over the fence in the middle of the night. He ran to a taxi stand and asked to be taken to the temple.

"I was so scared the owner would see me and kill me," Chuai Ngan said.

He said he told his story to Thai authorities and newspapers in Los Angeles, and gave them an address label for the sweatshop. But he said he did not report it to US law-enforcement officials because he was scared they would deport him.

A handful of others also escaped, and community advocates eventually helped get the information to authorities. On August 2, 1995, a multi-agency task force led by the California Department of Industrial Relations raided the complex.

Some of the women were cowed by their captors' earlier descriptions of US police and refused to open the door, which authorities hacked open with an axe. Others said they were overjoyed at their liberation.

"I was so happy," Clinton said. "I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going home!' "

In the end, most of the workers decided to stay in the US after Su and others successfully fought to win legal status for them. The workers annually celebrate August 13 as their first full day of freedom, since that's when all of them were allowed to leave immigration detention facilities.

Clinton and the Chuai Ngans said that whatever travails they endured here, their American journeys have been well worth taking.

Clinton fell in love and married one of the volunteers who helped her; the couple has two sons. She works the graveyard shift at Target stocking shelves and aims to attend community college as a stepping stone to a higher-paying job. Her biggest dream is to sponsor her niece - the daughter of her only sibling, who died in an auto accident - to immigrate to the United States.

Chuai Ngan, along with her husband Win, have started two Thai restaurants and a massage parlour, own two North Hollywood homes and four cars, including a Mercedes-Benz. They earn enough to send money home to relatives and have built a meeting hall, school lunchroom and library in their impoverished rice-farming village in northeastern Thailand. The couple also sends school supplies and sports equipment to the village children.

Like countless immigrants before them, the former slave labourers expressed gratitude for the bountiful opportunities in their adopted homeland.

"American people have such big hearts," Clinton said, "and now I'm so proud to say I'm one of them."