Bible College Founder Pleads Guilty To Using Foreign Students As Slave Labor, Even Though Slavery Is In The Bible

Well this is certainly a bummer for the moral education of foreigners who simply wanted to come to the Lord: The founder of a South Carolina Bible college has pleaded guilty in federal court to four felonies and two misdemeanors for his treatment of international students as virtual slaves. Reginald Wayne Miller -- whose middle name should have been all the warning anyone needed -- was arrested back in March after his innovative work-study practices came to light. Students who came to the Marion, South Carolina, school hoping to seek degrees in theology or ministry instead found themselves learning a lot about how some Americans do fundamentalism:

Students told investigators earlier this year that their classes were a sham, they lived in substandard conditions and Miller forced them to work at the college or his home for little pay, according to court documents. If they refused to work, the students said, Miller threatened to deport them.

Are there more fun details? Oh, you know there are:  

Prosecutors say Miller included false statements on documents -- known as F-1 forms -- that are submitted to the federal government and include information about a foreign student’s eligibility to study here. Miller stated that the students would not work more than 20 hours a week when he knew their work hours would exceed that maximum and he stated that students would receive educational instruction when, in fact, they did not.

For example, Miller stated on the documents that a student identified as John Doe No. 2 would learn English at the college but no English language classes were provided, according to court documents. Miller also falsely stated that another student, identified as John Doe No. 3, would be enrolled in a full course of study at the college. Instead of classwork, the students spent much of their time working.

Investigators with Homeland Security said in a criminal complaint filed earlier this year that Miller forced foreign students to work, sometimes more than 40 hours a week, at the Marion campus and at his personal residence for as little as $25 per week. Miller threatened to cancel the students’ visas and send them back to their home countries if they complained, according to court documents.

Still, we should point out that the Bible doesn't actually say that slaves should be paid anything, so perhaps the problem here is mostly one of disclosure -- if he'd just been a bit more Old Testament about the whole thing and not pretended that there'd be any education or pay, perhaps Miller would have had more of a leg to stand on in his defense. And as long as he didn't actually beat them so hard that they died, he'd have been in good shape. As it is, he compromised his principles, then lied about it on federal forms, where he probably should have simply refused to send in the forms at all, claiming that Big Government was trying to suppress his freedom of religion. Hell, maybe if he'd tried to make the students graze on land he didn't own, the militias would have come out to fight off any Feds who tried to arrest him.

This is only Miller's most recent collision with the unreasonable expectations of a hell-bound secular society, of course. In the 1980s, he was accused of making sexual advances toward the husbands of two of his college's female students, according to documents from Miller's 2007 divorce.

And then there was the unpleasantness in 2006, when Miller was charged with "lewdness and prostitution" after exposing himself to an undercover cop at a bath house in a state park. That charge -- which frankly looks like it resulted from one of those idiotic anti-gay sweeps used to make life hell for gays in general -- was expunged after Miller "entered into a pre-trial intervention program."

The charges against Miller in the current case don't actually include slavery, but focus instead on the fraudulent practices Miller engaged in to get his discount housekeeping staff:

The official charges against Miller are two felony counts of visa fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for each charge, and two felony counts of fraud in labor contracting, which carries maximum prison terms of five years for each charge [...]

Miller also pleaded guilty to a pair of misdemeanor charges of willful failure to pay minimum wage, which carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison for each charge.

Ultimately, this whole sorry spectacle results from laws put in place at the behest of Big Labor, so we should probably expect to hear a robust defense of Miller from Allen West.