Settlement of Human Trafficking Case

Kevin Johnson recently posted the following on the ImmigrationProf blog:

"In a story "Trafiicking Case ends for 48 Thai welders: A firm settles claims of immigrants who arrived on work visas and were forced into near-slavery" by Teresa Watanabe, the L.A. Times (Dec. 8) reports that federal authorities will announce a $1.4-million settlement in a case involving 48 Thai welders brought to California four years ago. The case, settled by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Trans Bay Steel Corp. of Napa, represents what experts call the hidden face of human trafficking: migrant laborers legally recruited — largely from Asia and Latin America — but exploited and abused while here. Though most public attention about human trafficking has focused on women and children in the sex trade, experts say laborers constitute at least half of the approximately 16,000 people trafficked into the United States annually.  Click here to read the story.

Unfortunately, there have been increasing reports of human trafficking and involuntary servitude over the last decade.  As the U.S. government increased border enforcement operations in the mid-1990s, with Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego and Operation Hold-the-Line in El Paso, fees charged by smugglers to migrants seeking to unlawfully enter the United States increased from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.  Some migrants have been forced to pay off smuggling debts through labor upon arrival in the United States.

As the L.A. Times story states, human trafficking is not simply a problem in the sex industry but a general labor market problem. ...

to read the rest of his post, click here.