The 29 year old, who works as an au pair in a Danish family, says she has to babysit for the family and can’t make it.
Carstensen met her at the beach last week, when the woman contacted her to ask for help.

The woman said, she had worked for three weeks without a day off. Her workdays stretch from early morning to late evening, and she has no time off in the middle of the day either.

This is against the regulations for au pairs in Denmark, in which the young women are only allowed to work for five hours a day, six days a week, unless they get economical compensation.

Carstensen is used to hearing these kinds of stories. Every Sunday, she attends mass at the Pentecostal Church on Drejevej at Nørrebro, where she councils aupairs from the Philippines. Carstensen herself came to Denmark fromthe Philippines as a child in 1986, because her mother had married aDanish man. She speaks perfect Danish, English and two Philippinedialects.

One of the very first au pairs she spoke to, told her thatshe worked 24-7 and had never had a day off. She outlined some of herduties, which included polishing windows on the second floor of abuilding and cleaning the gutter.

Carstensen realized that the womanwas being abused, and wrote to the Danish Immigration Service.

She never heard back. She says that many au pairs have children at home, but decide not to tell their host families. Carstensen insists oncalling them “au pair-women” instead of the popular Danish term ”aupair-girls”.

http://avisen.dk/au-pair-worker-fights-the-abuse_129842.aspx

Whatever the case, it is clear that the ground rules have changed. A new bilateral agreement with the Philippines will allow the Integration Ministry to stop au pairs using stays in Denmark to obtain permanent residence. Under the new visa rules, it will no longer be possible for an au pair to live with a family member in Denmark, or with a family of the same nationality as themselves.

The new rules seem to be aimed at controlling the mushrooming number of au pairs travelling here from the Philippines. In 2009, of the 2,773 au pairs registered in Denmark, 2,165 – or nearly 80 percent – came from the Philippines according to the latest figures from the Integration Ministry.  This means that the number of Filipino au pairs increased by 356 percent between 2004 and 2009, while the size of the Filipino community in Denmark grew by 76 percent from 4,721 to 8,317.

The ministry has also begun to run checks on the marital status of candidates for au pair visas. In a spot check carried out on 49 cases involving Filipinos, they discovered that over half had given false information and were therefore ineligible. To receive an au pair visa one has to be under the age of 30 and unmarried. Visas are also restricted to those who do not have young children in their country of origin.      Merete Pårensgaard, the head of department at the Integration Ministry, said that the new rules would be enforced to ensure that au pairs were coming to Denmark as part of a cultural exchange rather than for economic reasons.

‘They are not especially directed at Filipinos or reducing the number of au pairs,’ she said.  While there haven’t been any protests about tightening up the rules for au pair applicants, politicians and lobby groups fiercely disagree about the practice itself.  The government’s view on the matter seems to be laissez-faire. For instance Søren Pind, the development minister, wrote on his Facebook profile that the au pair system could be compared positively to sending foreign aid to developing countries.

However, this statement provoked the ire of the head of the development aid charity MS Action Aid Denmark.  ’Au pairs have absolutely nothing to do with development aid,’ Trine Pertou Mach told national daily Politiken. ‘Development aid is about transferring some of our wealth to the world’s poorest people. Are we going to invite to Denmark all the Africans who need to be saved from poverty?’

Her words were backed up by Niel Tofte, the general secretary of Care Denmark, who also thought that the minister was off the mark. ‘It is like comparing apples and pears, and one cannot do that,’ he told Politiken. ‘Au pair girls from the Philippines will not solve world poverty.’

Anne Gautier, who has been involved with au pairs for a number of years and is a member of a network to protect the rights of au pairs, said that she too strongly disagreed with Pind’s remark.      She describes the hardworking girls from East Asia as this century’s ‘skivvies’ – domestic servants who receive the worst pay and work under the worst conditions.  ‘I spent 30 years in Spain and saw the same situation there. Now it is happening here in Denmark too. It’s become chic for families to have an au pair who can look after children and do the house work for just 3,000 kroner a month,’ she said.

Gautier teaches Danish to foreigners at a Hellerup language school and estimates that she has been in touch with around 1,000 Filipinos during the last four years.  Instead of working as au pairs, she believes that they could contribute a lot more to Danish society if they were offered regular jobs. ‘Many of them would make excellent healthcare workers,’ she said. ‘They often speak much better English than Danes and have a strong work ethic. Unlike other minority groups, they adapt easily to Danish society.’

But she also pointed out that the problems with au pairs are not confined to the host countries. ‘The pressure on these girls comes from all sides,’ she said. ‘In the Philippines families also make unreasonable demandscv on these young women. They’ve become used to receiving support from them from abroad and there is a lot of corruption.

http://www.cphpost.dk/

Right now, for example, a Filipina woman is trying to get her passport back from her previous host family that took it from her two months ago. She had problems and did not get along with the family, and now she wants to leave, says the Filipino General Consulate in Denmark to the online newspaper Avisen.dk.

Without her passport, she is unable to use the plane ticket that was supposed to bring her back to the Philippines, says General Consul Poul Krogh.

“The woman has been with her host family for a year, but when she wanted to leave she couldn’t get her passport back. Now the case is being processed at the Filipino embassy in Oslo,” he says.

The woman left the family because she was no longer able to work 14-15 hours per day. She was ordered to clean the host family’s home as well as with other members of the family, which goes strictly against all the au pair regulations.

Women fear losing their visa
Also the Churches’ Integration Services (KIT), which is in contact with the majority of the Filipina au pairs, have had several inquiries from au pairs whose families have seized their passports.

Recently, a woman was forced to work at the host family’s restaurant in the town of Skagen in northern Jutland. The family had taken her passport from her so that she could not leave.

KIT gave the woman a ticket to go to Norway where she was able to stay with friends, but she never got her passport back. She never reported the case to the police, which is not unusual according to Hans Henrik Lund, the leader of KIT. He says that the au pairs are afraid of being deported, because they no longer work as au pairs.

”The power is always with the Danish family, who can threaten to report the au pair to Immigration Services if they don’t do as they are told. And the Filipina women are well aware that their chance of winning is quite poor if they report the case themselves,” Hans Henrik Lund explains.

A hidden problem
Only on rare occasions, the authorities are informed when passports have been seized.

“But just because it is not reported it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen,” says Mette Pårensgaard, who is Office Manager at the Au Pair and Intern Office at the Immigration Services.

She says that every time the Immigration Services have information meetings for the filipina au pairs, the women ask about what to do if their families seize their passports. They have all heard that this has happened to others.

”We tell the girls that they should never ever hand over their passports. The host family can have a copy of the passport if they absolutely insist,” says Mette Pårengaard.

Illegal and humiliating
Having your passport taken away from you is a violating and traumatic experience, says language teacher Anne Grautier, who has taught about 1000 Filipina au pairs at a Danish language school.

“The girls are devastated – they feel declared incapable of managing their own affairs. Very humiliating for them,” she explains.

Neither the Police of Northern Zealand nor Europol have been able to inform Avisen.dk about the number of Filipino passports that are reported stolen or lost in Denmark every year.

From ScandAsia

http://avisen.dk/gidsel-trick-vaerter-stjaeler-filippinske-pas_130036.aspx

I will share a true story, based from what I have gathered from the person involved. I had met personally this Filipina that is the main character in this story. Read carefully and understand.

Here’s how it began.

At the age of 29 she is still single, working very hard as a Domestic helper in Hongkong. Being a helper in Hongkong is a very hard work, or I may say wherever you go, if your a helper it’s really hard. Working full time in a house is very hard. If you’re staying with your employer, as long as you are not sleeping you have to serve them. Unfortunately to those helper who have a very hard employer, they can’t get food, no extra time, no extra pay, no sleep, no weekend off work, most especially they are abused.

Well luckily it doesn’t happen to Cindy. But of course she worked hard for her employer, she spent two years in Hongkong. Then she went back to the Philippines when she finished her contract. Staying in the Philippines is very hard if you don’t have a job. It’s not a kind of good for Cindy. She must have a job, or else they will starve and her body is not used if she doesn’t have work.

Decided, she went to an Internet Caffee, she searched for a job, then she found one, as an Au pair in London. It’s a good opportunity she said to herself. She contacted the family and they arranged everything. Time to fly, but it’s a kind of tough flight, she have to stop over to some country before London. Well, nothing is tough or rough if it will be a good opportunity to travel in UK and Europe.

She arrive the destination safely, her host family is waiting for her at the Airport, her job is to take care of the not so old man, and the house where he lived in. It’s quite good job and not so hard work for her.

Time passed by, she liked her job and not to mention that she is having a hidden relationship with her employer, well they are living together in the same house and the old man is alone. Her life is kind of good compared before, of course supported by her employer aside from the salary that shes gaining. But she can’t marry an old man she said.

Thinking that she will be living in three months time, she is prepared to go home. But unfortunately, she get pregnant, what a tragic. You are having sex, even if its old it can possibly make you pregnant, not thinking of that consequences, she’s shattered.

She told the old man, but he is too old to take responsibility, so they must think of a solution. In two months time she will go back home. What can they possibly do to solve the problem? It’s a very big problem.

The old man think of a possible solution. His son. She will seduced his son, the old man said. His son is divorced and has three children.

So the plan must implemented very quickly. They began to do it. The old man invited his son for a dinner and told him that he must visit him very often because he is too old to travel and visit his son and children. Not knowing the plan that the two had build, he agreed.

He often visit his father and Cindy is trying to seduce him. They dated many times. The end of their plan is coming, he seems to like Cindy and they began to have sex. Everything seems to be ok now they thought. After having sex for many times, after a month she told her that she’s pregnant. He is surprised but not shocked because he knows that it will happen as they don’t use any contraceptive. She also told him that she’s soon going back to the Philippines. So he decided that she must live with him in his own house and tell the authority that she is bearing his child, so she can stay longer. In the law one foreigner is authorized to live longer if she’s pregnant and the father will claim that it’s his child.

At last the plan had succeed. She lived with the son now. But after two months, he found out that it’s not his child, and the truth shocked him, his father is the father of the baby. What a life?!

His father explained everything, knowing that it’s also his own blood, he accepted the fact that it’s his not his child.

Now Cindy’s womb is in 6 months way, she’s still living with the son, and the father is still supporting her and the baby. Well, at least the baby saved her from going back home.

What can you say? What a life isn’t it? It’s just one of the story of a fact of life.

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