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IN THIS SECTION
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Projects Hidden Slaves
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3. Ending Forced Labor in the United States Forced labor exists in the United States because factors in the U.S. economy, the legal system, and immigration policy support it. Forced labor is a problem that is driven by a growing "informal economy" in the United States. The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines an informal economy as "all remunerative work—both self employed and wage employment—that is not recognized, regulated, or protected by existing legal or regulatory frameworks and non-remunerative work undertaken in an income-producing enterprise."5 Forced labor exists in both legal and illegal industries that are poorly regulated and fail to comply with U.S. labor laws. "Employers" in such industries are often criminal entrepreneurs for whom forced labor may be one of a number of illegal activities. Over time, such employees have found that forced labor can be a lucrative business made possible through the ready availability of free labor, better and more varied transport, new methods of secure communications, and the increased permeability of borders. U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deserve the lion's share of credit for exposing the existence of forced labor in the United States. The first major bust of a forced labor operation in recent years took place in 1995 when labor rights groups uncovered a sweatshop operated by a Chinese-Thai family in El Monte, California, a small community near Los Angeles. The seventy-two workers, most of them Thai women, had been held in a compound behind fences tipped with razor wire and forced to sew garments in slavelike conditions. Outrage over the case fueled efforts of a relatively small group of advocates and government officials to end such practices. The U.S. Congress responded by adopting the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (Trafficking Act). One effect of this process is that policymakers and advocates have taken the lead in the struggle to end forced labor. The challenge now is to raise the public's awareness of the problem and to educate and equip state and local law enforcement to recognize and destroy forced labor operations. Public awareness of forced labor is practically nonexistent in the United States. Occasionally the police or a group of rights advocates will expose a forced labor operation, and invariably the media will depict it as a single and shocking event. But rarely do such exposès educate the public about its place and function within the U.S. economy. Like the public, U.S. law enforcement is largely unaware of or poorly informed about the nature of forced labor and the plight of its victims. Because most victims of forced labor are undocumented workers or illegal aliens, law enforcement often regards them as criminals rather than victims ensnared in an illicit trade. This is largely because trafficking into forced labor is considered a federal crime. As a result, state and local law enforcement personnel lack basic training on identifying the crime, protecting victims, and bringing perpetrators to justice. Ironically, treating forced labor victims as criminals only makes it easier for an "employer" to get away with the crime because prosecutions rarely succeed without cooperative eyewitnesses. Our data suggest that at any given time ten thousand or more people are working as forced laborers in the United States.6 It is likely that the actual number reaches into the tens of thousands. Determining the exact number of victims, however, has proven difficult given the hidden nature of forced labor and the manner in which these figures are collected and analyzed. Data on victims of forced labor is further complicated by the U.S. government's practice of not counting the actual number of persons trafficked or caught in a situation of forced labor in a given year. Instead, it counts only survivors (defined by the Trafficking Act as victims of a "severe form of trafficking") who have been assisted in accessing immigration benefits. By this definition, the U.S. government reports that it has assisted approximately four hundred and fifty survivors over the past three years.7 Moreover, while the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year, it is unclear how these figures were calculated.8 Geographical Distribution of Victims Our data suggest that forced labor operations have existed in at least ninety U.S. cities over the past five years. This figure was derived from a press survey of one hundred and thirty one cases of forced labor and a telephone survey of forty-nine service providers across the United States. The press survey located cases of forced labor in sixty-four cities within the United States and its territories of Saipan and Guam, while service providers reported forced labor in thirty-eight cities in seventeen states, with twelve cities appearing in both surveys. The survey of service providers also revealed that the length of time victims were held in forced labor ranged from a few weeks to more than twenty years, with the majority of cases lasting between two and five years. Our data also suggest that forced labor operations are concentrated in the states of California, Florida, New York, and Texas—all of which are transit routes for international travelers. Cities where reported forced labor occurred also tended to be in states with large populations and sizable immigrant communities. Our data is consistent with findings of the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that in 2003, the largest concentrations of survivors of trafficking who received federal assistance resided in California, Oklahoma, Texas and New York. In 2002, the DOJ reports that survivors of trafficking who received federal assistance resided in Texas (31%), Florida (19%) and California (14%). Origins of Victims and Perpetrators
The press and service provider surveys show that as of December 2003 victims of forced labor came from thirty-nine countries, including the United States. The range of nationalities represents most regions of the developing world, as well as more developed countries like South Korea and those of Eastern Europe. The largest number of persons discovered to be in forced labor in the United States were Chinese, followed by Mexican and Vietnamese. Because no statistical sample has been drawn, it is important to note that these counts do not represent the actual distribution of nationalities of forced laborers in the United States, but the recorded nationalities may be thought of as indicative of the general pattern. Human trafficking and forced labor are normally considered crimes that primarily involve foreign nationals, but our research recorded a significant number of victims who are U.S. citizens. It is possible that cases involving United States citizens were more likely to be detected and also more likely to gain press coverage, but until more comprehensive surveys are carried out better estimations of the nationalities of forced labor victims will not be possible. The following table gives the number of cases and the approximate number of individuals of each nationality discovered in the two combined surveys; the nationality or the precise number of individual victims was not recorded in every case. In contrast, the Department of Justice estimates that the countries of origin for the greatest number of survivors who received federal assistance in 2003 were India (38%), Vietnam (11%), Mexico (9%), Indonesia (5%), Tonga (5%), Zambia (5%), and Thailand (4%). In 2002, the most common countries of origin were Honduras (36%) and Mexico (35%).10 Our data indicate the nationality or ethnicity of perpetrators closely matched that of victims. A common pattern is that those caught in situations of forced labor are brought into the United States and then exploited by perpetrators of the same nationality or ethnicity. Often the perpetrators are recently naturalized United States citizens with close ties to their country of origin. Russian Americans, Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans were all noted as perpetrators in cases in the surveys, primarily in the areas of prostitution, agriculture, or restaurant work. The economic sectors where longer-term U.S. citizens were found to be exploiting forced labor follow the same pattern, as shown in the following table.
When the perpetrator was a U.S. citizen not of recent origin, the cases tended to concentrate in certain areas of exploitation, especially the sexual exploitation of children and the trafficking of very young children for adoption. Economic and Demographic Sectors In our survey of press reports forced labor was found predominantly in prostitution, domestic work, agriculture, sweatshop factories, restaurant and hotel work, and entertainment.11 The U.S. Department of Justice data indicate similar findings; the highest concentrations of trafficking survivors who received federal assistance had been held as prostitutes, domestic servants, agricultural laborers and sweatshop factory workers.12 The distribution of our recorded cases by economic sector is shown in the following table.
The data from our press and service provider surveys suggest that prostitution is the sector in which the largest amount of forced labor occurs in the United States. It appears that the trafficking of women for prostitution and children for sexual exploitation are
Although little research exists into the connections between forced prostitution and existing "sex markets" in the United States, it stands to reason that these markets may encourage forced prostitution and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. These markets comprise a variety of activities including prostitution, pornography, striptease and erotic dancing, and peep shows, and they sometimes are under the control of organized crime networks.14 While prostitution is illegal in most states of the U.S., striptease is legal in many states, as is the sale of pornography, which is pervasive and constitutionally protected. For organized crime networks, the combination of legal and illegal sexual services is normally part of a larger portfolio of products and services that includes drugs and drug trafficking as well. The connection between the demand for sex services and the sexual exploitation of women and children in the United States has not been researched in a comprehensive and conclusive way. We lack quantitative data on the magnitude of the demand for sex services, the organization of the sex service economy, and its regulation. Despite this paucity of information, there appears to be little question that traffickers would not be engaged in this lucrative trade if a considerable demand for it did not exist. Our data suggest that sex traffickers usually recruit victims of their own nationality or ethnic background. Sex trafficking appears to be closely linked to migrant smuggling enterprises run by Asian, Mexican, and Eastern European organized crime networks, among others. Some of these operations feed victims into situations of forced labor. For eighteen months, beginning in August 1996, for example, the Cadena family trafficked twenty-five to forty women and girls from their hometown in Vera Cruz and forced them to work as prostitutes servicing migrant workers in the United States. It appears that the Cadenas targeted the migrant worker community by design. First, they recognized and promoted a demand for cheap sex services in communities of migrant workers and then supplied it. Second, they chose remote farms where the migrant workers were isolated and hidden from law enforcement and unlikely to be visited by inspection teams from the Department of Labor. Finally, they were confident that neither the women nor the men, most of whom were undocumented immigrants, would report the operators to the authorities for fear of arrest and deportation. According to our survey data, the second highest incidence of forced labor takes place in domestic service in U.S. homes. Two case studies of forced domestic servitude were made for this study, one involving two young women from Cameroon who were brought to a suburb of Washington, D.C., the other involving a Thai woman who was brought to Los Angeles, California. Our study indicates that forced labor in domestic work is fueled by the following:
Every year U.S. citizens and foreign nationals living in the United States bring thousands of domestic workers into the country, and many of them suffer abuse.15 The captive servants have included women from Brazil, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Nepal, Ghana, and India. Such cases are driven by a burgeoning demand for cheap, docile, exploitable household labor.16 Like agricultural workers, domestic workers have few legal protections. U.S. labor law does not define household workers as "employees" under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), thus denying them certain protections and restricting their ability to organize for better wages and working conditions.17 Another factor increasing their vulnerability is an immigration policy that allows domestic workers to be brought to the United States by their employers.18 Visas normally require that domestic service workers remain with their original employer or face deportation. This requirement tends to discourage workers from reporting abuses. Additionally, some perpetrators are foreign nationals who rely on diplomatic immunity to shield themselves from punishment if their use of forced labor is uncovered. Monitoring of the working conditions of domestic service workers is also difficult because work takes place in private homes. In each of our case studies of domestic workers, the "employer" effectively isolated the worker through threats and intimidation. For example, in the case of forced domestic servitude in the Washington, D.C. area, the victims' employers repeatedly lectured them about exaggerated dangers of life in the United States. The older survivor recalled her "boss," Vivian Satia, telling her: "It's not everybody can make it in America. It's dangerous out there. . . . You can go out there and get killed."19 Satia and her sister told their captives that U.S. immigration authorities would be looking for them to arrest and deport if they ventured outside alone. The agricultural sector experiences a high occurrence of forced labor in the United States. Farm workers in general are particularly vulnerable. A number of factors allow this:
Agriculture is one of the most profitable sectors of the formal economy.20 The growing international demand for U.S. agricultural produce is increasing the demand for farm labor across the country. Each year more than one and a half million seasonal farm workers cultivate and harvest produce in the United States.21 Some seven hundred thousand of these workers are migratory, following the harvest from place to place.22 In spite of the expansion in agricultural production, farm worker wages and working conditions are stagnant or declining.23 Like domestic workers, agricultural workers are not "employees" under the NRLA and are not guaranteed certain protections, making it difficult to organize and negotiate collectively with employers. When depressed wages, poor working conditions, and a lack of legal protections are combined with an increasing demand for cheap farm labor, the result is a continuum of abuses of which forced labor is the most extreme.24 Labor inspectors work to stem forced labor by enforcing labor laws, primarily the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA)25 and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).26 These laws mandate the payment of minimum wage and the regulation of deductions from workers' pay to ensure that workers are not paid below the federal minimum wage, regardless of their immigration status. The MSPA also mandates that migrant labor contractors—companies that supply farm labor to growers—must be registered with the Department of Labor. Both immigration and labor laws hold the labor contractor rather than the grower responsible for the legal rights of workers.27 It is common for growers to hire workers through farm labor contractors.28 The Department of Labor can revoke the permit of a contractor who has a history of violations. Legal advocates and government labor inspectors also can pursue civil suits against employers who use forced labor and violate the MSPA and FLSA. While the legal mechanisms exist, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor does not have the resources to effectively investigate sectors such as private households (in the case of domestic services) or the vast U.S. agriculture market.29 There are insufficient resources to prosecute the volume of forced labor cases. A Department of Labor spokesperson reflected: "These cases take a lot of resources to get the evidence needed to try perpetrators. And when we do have a criminal case, we lose an investigator for a long period of time."30 We can examine the prevalence of forced labor in agriculture by looking at the example of the citrus industry in Florida. Each year agriculture contributes almost one billion dollars to Florida's economy.31 During the 1995/1996 season citrus sales alone totaled $246.3 million, despite below-average citrus prices.32 Furthermore, citrus production is increasing, and over the next five years citrus production is expected to increase thirty percent.33 The increased production will rely on an increased supply of farm labor. Today this labor is supplied by work crews, composed primarily of immigrants from Mexico and Central America.34 Farm workers in Florida are predominantly immigrants, almost half of whom are undocumented,35 reflecting a trend seen throughout the United States. Since the late 1990s farm labor contractors Ramiro, Jose, and Juan Ramos have supplied labor to harvest oranges and other citrus products for some of the largest citrus growers in the United States. Between January 2000 and June 2001 the Ramos family forced approximately seven hundred Mexican and Guatemalan workers, predominantly men, to work without pay, or for far less than minimum wage, under threat of violence. They instituted this coercive control under the pretense of collecting debt owed for transport from Arizona to Florida and for work equipment, housing, utilities, and other necessities. The extent of the problem stretches beyond Florida's citrus industry. In June 2002 the U.S. Justice department indicted six New York agricultural labor employers on forced labor charges.36 In June 2003 a federal grand jury indicted a Hawaii man on charges of smuggling four Tongan nationals into Hawaii and forcing them to work for his pig farm and rock-wall business. The employer beat the Tongans with his fists, rocks, and tools and threatened to have them deported if they tried to leave.37 In September 2003 a federal grand jury convicted two New Hampshire employers of forcing four Jamaican nationals to labor in their tree service business by confiscating their passports and threatening them with physical violence. The U.S. Department of Justice reported that one of the employers "physically assaulted one of the men and [the other employer] ordered his dog to attack the man as he was fleeing."38 Sweatshop manufacturing, factories in which employers violate labor laws, is another economic sector that utilizes forced labor in the United States. This report looks at the largest single case of forced labor—in which over two hundred workers were enslaved—that arose in a sweatshop garment factory in the U.S. territory of American Samoa. It appears that this sector is vulnerable to forced labor because
Most individuals associate sweatshops with lesser developed countries. But industry pressures, for example, on U.S. textile and clothing manufacturers, encourage employers to locate factories in close proximity to retailers.39 If producers stay in the United States, they must compete with lower-wage manufacturers in other countries. Most of the U.S. garment and textile industry is concentrated around New York City and Los Angeles, California, close to the creative centers of fashion designer.40 According to the Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, seventy-five percent of all New York apparel manufacturing firms are sweatshops.41 That competition is pressing manufacturers who choose to remain in the United States to reduce their labor costs to a minimum. In some cases this can mean forced labor. Sweatshops are susceptible to forced labor because they frequently operate within the informal economy, frustrating attempts to monitor or enforce labor law regulation. Like agriculture and domestic service, sweatshop manufacturing is a sector in which there are few protections for workers and little monitoring of labor law compliance.42 Forced labor in U.S. garment factories came to light in 1995 when the group of Thai captive workers in El Monte, California, was freed. Our forced labor case study of Kil-Soo Lee, American Samoan garment manufacturer whose workers produced garments for major U.S. clothing retailers, is an example of how weak labor protections facilitated his forced-labor scheme. Minimum wage standards in American Samoa are lower than in mainland United States. Lack of workplace inspections or labor law enforcement, combined with the workers' fear of making complaints, create a context in which forced labor could occur. The worker's fear comes in part from the extensive control exercised by employers. The Samoan immigration board has the power to deport an immigrant worker in response to a request from an employer who wishes to terminate the worker's employment.43 According to an official from the Samoan governor's office, once the immigration board has processed the worker on arrival in American Samoa and issued him or her an identification card, the board has no proactive role and becomes substantially involved in a worker's affairs only if the worker lodges an objection to a request for deportation.44 Workers feared complaining and had few legal tools to help them fight back. The United States has broad and stringent laws against all forms of forced labor in addition to the international agreements it has ratified. The next section of this report explains this legal structure in more detail and highlights the way in which the law continually has sought to respond to the challenges of forced labor.
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