“The Holiday Traffick Jam: Human Trafficking and Why I am Especially Thankful For my Citizenship”
By Carlie Masterson
With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, many Americans like myself in The United States take a step back and think about what we are particularly thankful for. But we typically don’t think much about a gift we were handed the moment we were born: our citizenship. This gift came with abounding rights and benefits that I certainly couldn’t appreciate as a 7lb. newborn, and many as adults never come to fully realize. But I get it now, and that’s precisely why I am in law school.
I was handed my rights, unlike many of the estimated 14,500 to 17,500 people trafficked to the United States annually. [1] Federal law defines human trafficking or “trafficking in persons” as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.” [2] This modern day form of slavery is criminalized federally, and in response to the gravity of the problem and enactment of the Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, states are beginning to enforce ancillary regulations. [3]
Trafficking occurs internally within The United States, but presents exceptionally burdensome challenges for those trafficked from other nations because of the fact that they are not always perceived as victims. At times, once their status as illegal in The United States is identified, they are deported without receiving a proper remedy.
This past July, I attended a conference at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. entitled “Answering Pope Francis’s Call: an American Catholic Response to Modern-Day Slavery.” Before this conference I had a rigid idea of what I thought human trafficking was, thinking mainly about Liam Neeson in “Taken,” saving his daughter from an international sex trafficking scheme. However, Marissa Castellanos from the Human Trafficking Program at Catholic Charities of Louisville explained that although sex trafficking is prevalent in the United States, labor trafficking is also widespread.
Labor trafficking occurs frequently in areas of employment such as in the agricultural industry, cleaning businesses, contracting, and restaurant businesses. [4] Forced labor and violence is used but not necessary. For example, a typical situation is that a United States business owner may exploit people from Central America who seek a better life for themselves due to violence in their own community. The American will take them to the United States, holding their “heroic effort” of removing them from their violent community as a debt-bondage. This restricts the victim’s freedom of movement, making them vulnerable and forcing them to continue to work for their trafficker out of feelings that they owe them something, or out of fear of deportation due to their illegal status in the United States. Although this truly is a modern day form of slavery, the perception of “saving” the victim from their violent homeland warps many opinions about the severity of the situation.
Although deportation in many situations would be devastating to the victim, the legal remedies provided by the United States are also minuscule compared to the cruelty encountered. Two remedies available to trafficking victims are the “T” and “U” visas. To be eligible for a T visa you must: (1) be a victim of trafficking, as defined by the law; (2) be present in the United States due to trafficking; (3) comply with reasonable requests from law enforcement to investigation and prosecution of the trafficking; (4) demonstrate that you would suffer extreme hardship if removed from the United States; and (5) be admissible to the United States. [5] For U visa eligibility, you must: (1) be a victim of qualifying criminal activity; (2) have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse as a result of the criminal activity; (3) have information about the criminal activity; (4) have been helpful or are likely to be helpful in the investigation or prosecution of the crime; (5) have been a victim of a crime that occurred in the United States or violated U.S. laws; and (6) be admissible to the United States. [6] Keep in mind that the burden is on the victim to establish requirements of the visas. Also, these visas do not come with all the benefits enjoyed by citizens, and there are restrictive caps on the number of victims extended visas of these categories each year that are far less than the applications received.
While the conference opened my eyes to this prevalent modern day slavery in the United States, I was also appalled to learn about human trafficking worldwide. While sex and labor trafficking are the main types of trafficking that occur in the United States, there are countries where human organ (China) and surrogate mother trafficking (India) are commonplace.
Coincidently, when I returned to my internship in the legal department of Jewish Family & Children’s Service the following Monday, I was given the task of writing a personal statement from a labor trafficked victim’s point of view from notes the attorney took during an interview with the victim. This personal statement would be included in the U visa application submitted to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As I attempted to put myself in the victim’s shoes to write her vulnerable story of fear and maltreatment, I questioned why I deserve all the rights I was given as a citizen just because my mother happened to give birth to me in the United States. Meanwhile there are others, like this woman who undertook so much, and are striving for just a few of my rights. This Thanksgiving, I will be especially thankful for my citizenship, which was handed to me on a silver platter with bountiful rights and freedoms.
[1] http://www.humantrafficking.org/countries/united_states_of_america
[2] https://oag.ca.gov/human-trafficking/what-is
[3] Eileen Overbaugh, Human Trafficking: The Need for Federal Prosecution of Accused Traffickers, 39 Seton Hall L. Rev. 635 (2009)
[4] https://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/labor-trafficking-in-the-us
[5] http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/victims-human-trafficking-other-crimes/victims-human-trafficking-t-nonimmigrant-status
[6] http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/victims-human-trafficking-other-crimes/victims-criminal-activity-u-nonimmigrant-status/victims-criminal-activity-u-nonimmigrant-status
