User:Cyoung530/sandbox

Human trafficking is the “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

Overview
Human trafficking has occurred in the United States for many years. The initial form of human trafficking in the United States was in the form of the slave trade. After the official abolition of slavery in the United States, the industrialization, expansion into a global economy, and cultural changes have all contributed to the creation of a new form of slavery known as trafficking. The types of human trafficking that occur the United States are forced labor, debt bondage, document servitude, and sex trafficking. These groups of trafficked people fund the formal economy and the illegal economy of the United States. Because they lack the labor standards that are given to employees of the formal economy, these groups are often at high risk of violence, severe exploitation, limited mobility, and deprivation of human rights. While the United States has created anti-trafficking laws in attempt to eliminate trafficking and protect its victims, the opposing views of the definition of trafficking in the United States limits the application and enforcement of this law. In addition, a lack of cohesive national departments to battle trafficking as well as a lack of cohesive data about those who are trafficked have also made it difficult to asses and control human trafficking in the United States. Nationwide data collection services; however, are underway with the first national data collection to begin in early 2013 by the Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center.

Other research and subsequent prevention of trafficking hinges on the two major networks of NGOs, Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) and Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) that have great influence on shaping the U.S. policy on trafficking in persons. The two types NGOs, however, differ in their definition of trafficking; CATW strongly opposes GAATW's distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. Thus, they have each attempted to influence policy in different ways leading to a variety of ways in which trafficking is criminalized and a variety of services available to victims of trafficking.

Current status of human trafficking
According to the Department of State 2011 Trafficking in Persons report, the United States is a Tier 1 country for trafficking. The United States is working to eliminate human trafficking in the United States, and worldwide. Each year the Department of State releases data compiled on the state of Human Trafficking in many different countries including the United States as described by the standards according to TVPA. In addition, they also release data on trafficking cases under federal prosecution and estimates of those trafficked; however, the report also cautions that the data may not be representative of the number of individuals actually trafficked both due to the lack of cohesion between many states and agencies battling human trafficking and the inability to account for undiscovered victims. Below is a compilation of data from a variety of United States' agencies and the United Nations.

Reports on Human Trafficking
An estimated 14,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year, although again because trafficking is illegal, accurate statistics are difficult. The United States Justice Department estimates that the number may be as high 17,500 people a year, but it is unclear how they calculated this estimate. In the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, Secretary Hillary Clinton addressed that the global financial crisis has decreased the global demand for labor and increased the number of people willing to take risks for economic opportunities will likely increase the prevalence of cases of forced labor and prostitution.

Department of Justice 2011 Report
The findings of the U.S. Department of Justice's 2011 report, “Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2008-2010,” include: 1) From 2008 to 2010, Federal anti-trafficking task forces opened 2,515 suspected cases of human trafficking; 2) 82% of suspected incidents were classified as sex trafficking; nearly half of these involved victims under the age of 18; 3) Approximately 10% of the incidents were classified as labor trafficking; 4) 83% of victims in confirmed sex-trafficking incidents were identified as U.S. citizens, while most confirmed labor-trafficking victims were identified as undocumented immigrants (67%) or legal immigrants (28%); 5) Only 25% of the confirmed victims of human trafficking received a “T-visa,” part of a federal program designed to aid victims of trafficking. While the findings represent the government’s best estimate, the authors caution that “the data described in this report reflect the information that was available to, and entered by, these state and local law enforcement agencies,” and such data systems are still being established and are likely not recording all incidents.

Department of State 2011 Report
According to the Department of State, the United States was identified as a Tier 1 country with unspecified federal agencies charging 181 individuals with trafficking other humans, and obtaining 141 convictions in 103 human trafficking prosecutions. Of the prosecutions reported by the Department of State 32 were labor trafficking cases and 71 were sex trafficking cases.

What is Tier 1?
Tier 1 means that the government is in compliance with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000 to eliminate trafficking. The minimum standards or the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 as listed in section 108 of the legislation are:

(1) "The government of the country should prohibit severe forms of trafficking in persons and punish acts of such trafficking.

(2) For the knowing commission of any act of sex trafficking involving force, fraud, coercion, or in which the victim of sex trafficking is a child incapable of giving meaningful consent, or of trafficking which includes rape or kidnapping or which causes a death, the government of the country should prescribe punishment commensurate with that for grave crimes, such as forcible sexual assault.

(3) For the knowing commission of any act of a severe form of trafficking in persons, the government of the country should prescribe punishment that is sufficiently stringent to deter and that adequately reflects the heinous nature of the offense.

(4) The government of the country should make serious and sustained efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement
During 2009, ICE initiated 566 cases. These investigations led to 388 criminal arrests, more than double the number of arrests from the previous fiscal year, resulting in 148 indictments and 165 convictions.

Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center
Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center is an inter-agency intelligence center that gathers information of illicit travel—including that of trafficking. The center also coordinates with foreign agencies and diplomats to monitor and fight trafficking on an international basis. With the enactment of TVPRA 2008, HSTC was also charged with the responsibility of compiling comprehensive inter-agency database on persons identified as victims of human trafficking.

Geographic Distribution of Forced Laborers
Victims of human trafficking in the United States are largely from Thailand, India, Mexico, Philippines, Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic, though US citizens have also been victims of human trafficking. While women and children may be trafficking from other countries, "vulnerabilities are increasingly found in visa programs for legally documented students and temporary workers who typically fill labor needs in the hospitality, landscaping, construction, food service, and agricultural industries." Patterns where human trafficking occurred was consistently in areas with high-population areas that serve as hubs for international travel and also have large immigrant populations.In the study, higher numbers of reported cases were found in California, New York, Texas, and Florida. This is consistent with the US Department of Justice report that the largest concentrations of survivors of human trafficking were located in California, Oklahoma, New York, and Texas.

Types of Trafficking
Research conducted by University of California at Berkeley on behalf of the anti-trafficking organization Free the Slaves found that about 46% of people in slavery in the United States are forced into prostitution. The U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted 360 defendants for Human Trafficking from 2001 to 2007 and gained 238 convictions.

From January 2007 through September 2008, there were 1,229 alleged cases of human trafficking nationally. 1,018 of them, nearly 83 percent, were sex trafficking cases. Sex trafficking has a close relationship with migrant smuggling operations headed by Mexican, Eastern European, and Asian crime organizations. Domestic servitude claims 27% of people in slavery in the US, agriculture 10%, and other occupations 17%.

Trafficking of US citizens within the US occurs as well. It is estimated that between 240,000 and 325,000 children are at risk for sexual exploitation each year in the US. Children who are considered runaways are at particular risk of prostitution or trafficked into the sex industry. Of the 1,682,900 children who were considered runaways for a period of time in 1999, 71% were considered at risk for prostitution. In 2003, 1,400 minors were arrested for prostitution, 14% of whom were younger than 14 years old. A study conducted by the International Labor Union indicated that boys are at a higher risk of being trafficked into agricultural work, the drug trade, and petty crime. Girls were at a higher risk of being forced into the sex industry and domestic work. In 2004, the Department of Labor found 1,087 minors employed in situations that violated Hazardous Occupation Standards. The same year, 5,480 children were employed violating child labor laws. Due to the secretive nature of trafficking, it is difficult to piece together an accurate picture of how widespread the problem is.

Prevalence of Forced Labor
According to the National Human Rights Center in Berkeley, California, there are currently about 10,000 forced laborers in the U.S., around one-third of whom are domestic servants and some portion of whom are children. In reality, this number could be far higher due to the difficulty in getting exact numbers of victims, due to the secretive nature of human trafficking. On the other hand, it could be far lower - and possibly approach zero - since there are virtually no arrests for this in the country, despite great attention paid to it by many NGOs and by law enforcement agencies. In addition, the US government only keeps a count of survivors, defined as victims of severe instances of human trafficking, who have been assisted by the government in acquiring immigration benefits. The Associated Press reports, based on interviews in California and in Egypt, that trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer. This custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S.

Relevant Examples
Evelyn Chumbow, 21, was lured from Cameroon by a rich Maryland couple promising a bright future and a top rate education, as she was a top ranked student in her native country. Instead she was given no education and forced into servitude for the wealthy couple.

R&A Harvesting was a Florida citrus farm that coerced workers into forced labor with little or no pay. In 2002 four men were charged with organizing forced labor and sentenced to 15 years in jail. They were ordered to turn over their $3 million dollar estate and all their property.

Cristina Andres pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial sex trafficking. She recruited two girls 13 and 17 at the time and told them she would get them a job in Nashville at a restaurant. Physical force and threats against the victims and their families were used to keep the girls under the control of those in charge. Other operations can be larger. 31 people were taken into custody following allegations of illegal smuggling of women through Canada and Mexico into the U.S. The Korean women involved were forced to pay off their smuggling debts through prostitution and were shipped around seven different states, including Maryland and Washington, D.C. In total, 70 women were freed from the suspected trafficking ring.

Poverty
Poverty can lead to increased trafficking in many different ways. First and foremost, poverty affects the notion of individual choice and often drives families to make decisions out of desperation and lack of education. Poverty, in some countries, may influence parents to send their children to work in another urban country with a more stable economy, such as the United States, without the knowledge that the child is then forced into slave labor or prostitution (See: Child trafficking). Furthermore, once this kidnapping and trafficking of the child occurs, the victim often accepts their situation and limits efforts to escape the their imprisonment. Often times, they wind up alone in a country that they do not speak the language making it difficult to seek aid. In addition, victims often accept their positions because they feel that this is the only way that they may send some remittances to their family and their enslaved situation may in some cases still be better than their original impoverished and desperate state.

Globalization
The rate of human trafficking has directly increased in correlation with globalization. Globalization has increased cross-border trade and the demand for cheap labor; however, migration policies of the United States and other countries have not changed with the level of demand for cheap labor, thus forcing people to illegally immigrate. Illegal immigration then creates ideal conditions for organized criminal operations to form trafficking circles. With increased trade of foreign goods to rural areas, import competition in the rural markets have also forced poor areas to migrate to industrialized economies for a better livelihood. Their desperate positions often make them subject to exploitation and trafficking into different forms of forced labor to support that economy. Lastly, the technological advances that go hand in hand with globalization has facilitated the ease with which organized crime circles may conduct trafficking operations.

Prostitution
Some feminist groups believe that prostitution and sex trafficking are synonymous. They believe that even if the women agreed to be a sex worker in a foreign country that the worker was still trafficked because of the proceeding conditions that lead her to believe that sex work was the only viable work option. Other feminist groups, on the other hand, believe that prostitution is a form of labor just like any other migrant labor; however, due to the criminalization of prostitution in the United States, prostitutes are then subject to coercion and exploitation and subsequent trafficking. Current debates about modifications to TVPA policy are based about these two arguments. In providing aid for victims of sex trafficking the government must take a stand on whether or not they believe the sex industry and sex trafficking are inherently linked.

Government Corruption
Even though the United States offers protection for trafficking victims, few victims seek the government's aid for either fear of corruption, fear of deportation, or fear of reprisals with their family. Many victims of trafficking are citizens of countries with corrupt governments that actually aid trafficking. Because victims' home country's lack of a reliable police system, trafficking victims are hesitant to reach out to the law for aid. In addition, because the trafficked victims are in the United States illegally, they fear deportation back to their home country. Deportation can often leave trafficked victims either at the mercy of their traffickers once again or it may cause harm to their family through either punishment by the traffickers or a loss of remittances that the traffickers had been sending to the family.