Forced Sex and Labor Trafficking in the U.S.

By Rebecca Clarren, Ms. Magazine. Posted August 15, 2007.

This is an excerpt from a longer report in Ms. magazine. To get the whole story, pick up Ms. magazine on newsstands now.

LOS ANGELES -- We like to think of slavery in America as something consigned to history books, a dark chapter set in Southern cotton plantations and the hulls of ships set sail from Africa. Flor Molina wishes this were true.

For part of the year in 2003, Molina, a 29-year-old Mexican, was held against her will and forced to work in a factory in southern California, making dresses from 5:30 in the morning until 11 at night, seven days a week. She was not allowed to leave the factory or take a shower; she shared a small bed with another woman in the back of the shop. If she didn't sew fast enough, her boss would pull her hair, pinch and slap her.

"If we wouldn't do what she [her employer] said, she told us somebody who we love would pay the consequences," says Molina, a small woman with steady dark eyes and black hair that falls below her waist. "She told me she could kill me and no one would ask her for me. She told me dogs have more rights than I have in this country."

Molina is one of tens of thousands of people trafficked into the U.S. from other countries and forced to work against their will. They come here primarily from El Salvador, Mexico, Korea and China, but in any country where people are desperate for jobs they're prey to the allure of a mythic, prosperous U.S.

About 80 percent of those enslaved are women, pawns in the fastest-growing and one of the largest criminal industries in the world, second only to the drug trade and tied with the arms trade. With an estimated 800,000 people trafficked across all international borders each year, the shadow industry is estimated to generate $31.6 billion in profits annually.

There is a perception, propagated in large part by mainstream media, that slavery in the U.S. occurs mostly in the guise of forced prostitution. But the majority of trafficking victims are people who may be sewing our clothes, picking our crops, washing dishes in our restaurants, cleaning our motel rooms and building our homes and office buildings. They may be enslaved as domestic servants in our neighbors' homes.

Due in large part to the efforts of feminist groups, in 2000 Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which created a special "T-visa" that enables victims of sex and labor trafficking to remain temporarily in the United States -- if they agree to assist in the investigation or prosecution of their traffickers. After three years, the attorney general can admit them for permanent residency. The TVPA also made victims eligible for services such as housing, food stamps, cash assistance, health care and educational and job services.

But seven years after the passage of what was hailed as a very innovative law that created powerful new tools to prosecute and punish traffickers, the Bush administration has failed to fund and implement its provisions in a meaningful way. There has been a shocking lack of trafficking investigations -- just 639 were opened by the Department of Justice between fiscal years 2001 and 2006. Only 360 defendants have been charged, resulting in 238 convictions.

See more stories tagged with: sex trafficking, slavery, united states, human trafficking, labor trafficking, forced labor

Rebecca Clarren writes about labor issues for a variety of national magazines. Ms. research associate Jennifer Hahn also contributed to this piece.

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