As the United States begins again to consider Comprehensive Immigration Reform, it is time to consider one of the most horrifying facets of immigration policies that don’t work – human trafficking. Human trafficking is already illegal under international and U.S. law.

THE FACTS

The Victims Of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 defines human trafficking as ”the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for commercial sex, labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.” About 700,000 to 2,000,000 persons, primarily women and children, are trafficked annually within or across international borders. An estimated 45,000 to 50,000 annually enter the United States.

Trafficked victims frequently come from less developed countries and are taken to more developed countries. They are often promised opportunity or employment by traffickers, only to be coerced into prostitution or involuntary servitude once away from home.

Women and children are the key targets because of their marginalization, and limited economic resources. Traffickers use various forms of trickery (fraud, deception, and false marriage) and abuse (intimidation, threats, kidnapping, and physical abuse) to acquire and control victims. They are also lured by the promise of good working conditions and high pay, combined with the opportunity to escape oppressive poverty.

The recruiter often acquires travel documents and covers the immediate expenses of the trip and assures the victim that repayment of the debt will be easy once she gets her good paying new job. The promised job as a restaurant or factory worker, domestic worker, dancer, or model does not materialize and she finds herself entrapped and abused in a brothel, massage parlor, someone’s home, an illicit factory, or an agricultural outpost. Victims, courageous enough to leave home for a better life for themselves and to provide for their families, lose hope. They often live in fear that if they dare to speak out, local authorities will arrest them and forcibly send them back home in a state of disgrace.

Trafficking in people is lucrative. The International Labor Organization estimates that trafficking is a 35 billion dollar operation annually. It is the third largest criminal industry in the world today, after arms and drug dealing, and is the fastest growing. Sex trafficking is the most lucrative sector of trade in people.

The root causes are: 1) Vulnerability due to poverty, lack of education, employment, and needed services, cultural factors including unequal rights for women and children, racism and classism, and social and political instability including escaping from war, persecution, violence, poverty, environmental disasters, or human rights violations. 2) Greed leading to exploitation of labor to keep production costs down, profits up, and cheap goods in the market, globalization as it increases the global flow of capital, destabilizes grassroots communities and thwarts alternative economic policies, and 3) Corruption in government, law enforcement and fundamental human values.

Factors promoting sex trafficking include: 1) increased demand for prostitution, global poverty, repressive immigration policies, military presence which generates sex industries as rest and recreation venues for the troops, racial myths and stereotypes used in promotion of sex tourism, globalization of the economy which means globalization of the sex industry, as it becomes an industry without borders.

In the United States victims of trafficking originate from such countries as Russia, The Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, The Czech Republic, Mexico and India.