Russia’s disregard for its migrant workers’ human rights is out of control. An already alarming situation is exacerbated with the current economic instability and the general public’s disinterest in their plight. Human Rights Watch recently came out with a comprehensive report, detailing abuses in the construction business, which relies almost exclusively on migrant work and employs almost one half of Russia’s large migrant population.

Migrant workers are routinely beaten, murdered, cheated of their wages, trafficked as slave labor and forced to work in dangerous conditions. They are held in bondage without written contracts, which are required by Russia’s law. Laws, which if adhered to and enforced, would give them some kind of legal leverage and the ability to negotiate their inhumane conditions. They are mistreated by their employers, the police and the general population all of whom are taking and enjoying full economic advantage of the undocumented status of these workers.

The human story of Russian migrant workers is shared around the globe. They are part of the free labor movement, just like the impoverished Africans and many Eastern Europeans in the European Union, or Malaysians in Kuwait, Mexicans or Latin Americans in the United States. These are Economic Refugees, escaping non-viable economic systems often created by the pillage of human and natural resources by large corporations and powerful nations around the world. Just a glance at the U.S. – Mexico Border and the exploitation of women workers in Tijuana, and the direct aftermath of NAFTA reveals the true human cost of this crime.

Many of them are lured by the prospect of short-term jobs that would enable them to feed their families. Some of them even arrive legally, but their passports are confiscated and they are sold into slavery to private citizens or companies. Their undocumented status strips their humanity in the public’s eyes, making them an easy target for abuse, or at the very least ambivalence. Regardless of their journeys they find themselves enslaved by the same economic dynamics that helped create the situation in the first place.

Unregulated corporate labor policies throughout the world, have created a large pool of dispensable labor, weakening already existing unions, and suppressing, often violently, any efforts to organize and fight for worker’s rights. Those with jobs, often keep silent since in this climate the transient nature of their position is clear.

This is hardly a new tactic. The rise of the labor movement and unions in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries saw concerted efforts to intimidate workers attempting to organize. In the U.S. former slaves and Black sharecroppers were camped at factory gates as warning against union organization. During the Great Depression, farmers decimated by the Dust Bowl were trucked to factories for the same purpose. What is different, and perhaps more dangerous for Human and Worker’s Rights is the global scale of the issue. Corporations span the planet, or move from country to country, cheaper labor pool to even cheaper labor pool to reap profits that ultimately succeed only in eroding and degrading Human Rights and peace.

While workers’ rights everywhere are under constant attack, the migrant workers are in the most disadvantageous position due to their non-citizen and often undocumented status. However, they are not idle at the sidelines of the worker’s movement, taking in the abuse silently. Instead, using the same tools that are at the disposal to the citizens of their “host” countries, they fight against exploitation. Be it through protests , marches and community organizing in the United States, or networking through private channels to overcome bureaucracy in Russia, the migrant workers are fighting to reclaim their humanity and, by extension, the humanity of workers everywhere.