Thank you for this. I just now got around to reading the article...
My initial thoughts?
There are so many BLATANT labor violations happening at every one of these places. The New York Times published this piece for the world to see, and these salons still operate with impunity. SMH.
Lots of things are starting to make sense to me about this industry, and the Asian underground economy as a whole.
As extremely long and informative as the article is, it still doesn't even scratch the surface (I didn't expect much from the milquetoast NY Times anyway). They focused mostly on the wage theft aspect of things, but tiptoed around a lot of elephants in the room, such as:
Who is really financing the lives of these women who make $0 - $30 a day living in NYC? Even though the featured girl in the article was one of 6 people staying in a 1 br apt, their combined salary is still not enough to pay for a Manhattan or Queens apartment, plus food & clothing, plus incidentals & emergencies.
How do these salons REALLY pay rent + overhead in the NY tristate area? They can exploit the workers all they want, but the math still isn't adding up. Depending on where you go, some salons don't even be having heavy customer traffic.
How do these people get in the country in the first damn place? In the little bit they talked about Hispanic female workers, they made sure to mention their debts to the "coyotes" who "smuggled" them here. Who tf is shipping all of these Asian girls here and putting them in these situations???
They touched on the Labor Dept only doing a few half-assed investigations, but never really questioned WHY these people are getting such a pass from the government. Furthermore, they still only focused on agency investigations into wage theft. They briefly talked about how these shops tend to have counterfeit licensing documents, but didn't go deeper into that at all. They briefly talked about the illegal immigration status of the Asian nail techs, but didn't go deeper into that at all, either. The government just be letting them rock out. What are the connections there? What kind of organized crime syndicates are behind all of this? Why didn't they even use the term human trafficking once in the entire article?
Anyway, thanks for pointing me in the direction of this info, breh. I get into a rabbit hole when I learn some new shyt. I'm gonna be investigating this shyt for like a week
or any Filipino shorty who's a nurse/cna, especially if her ass from Cali or Texas. on my soul them some ratchet ass broads on the low.
". my mother was like "that's my son 
". ol girl immediately put on the 
face and went into go mode. eye fuccin, playing footsie under the nail station etc. after we finished up, i asked for her number so i could "schedule an appointment" and a week later i was digging her guts out in her middle of her momma's living room 
.
after this thread.
