Migrant Workers Melt Like Candles in the Gulf to Give Light to Their Families Back Home

Recent shocking statements made by Chairman K V Shamsudeen of the Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust (PBWT) divulged that only five percent of Indian expatriates living in Bahrain would lead a comfortable lifestyle from their earnings if they were forced to return home today. These findings reflect the extravagant lifestyles their families are creating with the hard-earned remittances received from their migrant worker relatives and a disregard for responsible saving habits. The Sharjah-based representative said that this problem occurred amongst other national groups as well, including Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis.

Consequently, the TradeArabia News Source reported that this startling percentage of low and middle income migrant workers from India who have worked in the Gulf States for decades are returning home with little or no resources to further support their families.

The survey from which this information was derived was conducted by the PBWT and included 10,100 migrant workers from India living in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries, including 1,500 from Bahrain who admitted that their sacrifices and self-deprivation in exchange for the well-being of their families back home yielded little long-term benefit.

Shamsudeen stated that only 2% of Indian families were responsibly saving portions of the remittances they receive, and encouraged migrant workers to discuss the harsh and often unforgiving conditions they face while living in the Gulf with their families, as a way to encourage more conservative spending habits, explore wiser investment opportunities, and inspire greater appreciation for the money they receive, especially given the precarious nature of their jobs vis a vis the recent global economic downturn. Shamsudeen eloquently explained that saving in small drops will eventually make an ocean.

80% of workers surveyed were married, but only 10% had their families living with them in the Gulf.

To add insult to injury, migrant workers are often ignored by their families if they do not receive remittances. Families in India were said to not appreciate the sacrifices that their spouses/relatives make while trying to support them; many often enjoy only one meal a day and live in deplorable conditions.

5 Million "Non-Resident Indians" as they are called live and work in the GCC countries, 60% of whom come from the Kerala region in southern India.

This article is particularly au courant given recent initiatives taken by regional governments to forcibly deport migrant workers living in the GCC countries illegally, including Bahrain. Knowing that the hard work invested by these workers will yield nothing once they return home is heart-wrenching.

California Ballot Initiative Strengthens Human Trafficking Laws

From PRLog:

California Against Slavery is now gathering signatures for a state ballot initiative to strengthen human trafficking laws. The initiative would deter traffickers with stiffer criminal penalties, aid district attorneys in prosecuting human trafficking offenses, increase protection for human trafficking victims, and mandate human trafficking training for law enforcement officers.

Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery and its victims are subjected to force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor. It happens in the United States and worldwide.

"We support and desperately need to see revision in our state law with regard to human trafficking," said Jenny Williamson, founder and president of Courage to Be You, a Sacramento-area organization that rescues and restores victims of child sex trafficking. "Severe fines and extended jail time for the perpetrators of this evil must be enacted if ever this crime is to be deterred. Our courageous law enforcement officers must be equipped and encouraged with mandatory, specific training so that rescuing these vulnerable victims and putting their perpetrators away becomes a priority within our state."

The California Against Slavery initiative is endorsed by many organizations combating human trafficking, including Breaking Chains, Captive Daughters, Courage to be You, International Justice Mission (IJM), Lotus Outreach, MISSSEY, Oasis USA, Polaris Project, Shared Hope, and Stop Child Trafficking Now.

"California is a major hub for human trafficking," said Linda Smith, founder and president of Shared Hope International. "We fully endorse the California Against Slavery initiative because we see the strategic importance of having stronger state laws in place in the fight against human trafficking."

Read the full article

The Lost Girls

From the Texas Monthly by Mimi Swartz

Most people who are aware of the existence of human trafficking think that it happens in faraway places, like war-torn countries in the former Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, or Eastern Europe. Few can imagine that slaves are brought into the U.S. to work in restaurants, factories, and sexually oriented businesses (SOBs to those in the know). In fact, across the country, tens of thousands of people are being held captive today. Depending on whom you ask, Houston is either the leading trafficking site in the U.S. or very near the top, along with Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, and New York City. . .

In recent years there have been several high-profile arrests and prosecutions in Harris County, which has some of the toughest anti-trafficking laws in the country and one of the country’s most innovative anti-trafficking task forces. In 2005 police brought down Maximino “El Chimino” Mondragon, who ran one of the nation’s largest sex-trafficking rings, in which young women from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mondragon’s native El Salvador were forced to work as prostitutes. That same year, a sixty-year-old man named Evan Lowenstein was arrested for operating at least a dozen brothels stocked with women from Eastern Europe who had been brought into the U.S. with promises of legitimate work. He got probation and disappeared. . .

But each time a case is made, the business simply morphs and grows in a new way. Case in point: When officers in the FM 1960 area set up a task force and began shutting down massage parlors that did not have legitimate licenses to operate, the traffickers began circumventing state regulations by reclassifying their operations as “tea parlors” and, in a novel twist, “art galleries.” “We could have fifty people doing this 24/7 and still not have enough manpower,” says Skip Oliver, a captain in the Harris County Constable’s Department in Precinct 4. “You can punch a button here and get a girl from Thailand in the pipeline. We’re nibbling at a piece of the problem. We don’t even see the whole picture.” . . .

Many rescuers know that women who wind up as trafficking victims were usually abused earlier in their lives, often by a family member or a spouse; that’s what makes them so vulnerable to the traffickers’ feigned affection and false protection. But the repeated rapes that captive prostitutes endure can turn someone with low self-esteem into someone with a serious psychiatric illness. Many suffer from severe dissociative identity disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder is usually a given. Some are bipolar. Many of these conditions have similar symptoms: extreme highs, harrowing lows, paranoia, drug or alcohol abuse as self-medication, and various forms of self-destructive behavior, including self-mutilation. . .

Usually trafficking victims are profoundly ashamed of what they have been doing or believe they have failed at it, disappointing the families who depend on them for survival. Like battered spouses, they often return to their abusers. Many have no other way to make a living. . .

“They break people beyond repair,” Dottie [Lester, coordinator for the Trafficked Persons Assistance Program for YMCA International Services] says of traffickers. “If I shattered a glass and then put it back together, it wouldn’t hold water.”

Read the Full Article

Arresting traffickers, rescuing victims, and prosecuting cases are the more high profile ways to fight human trafficking. As this article points out, though, such efforts are only first steps at best. Trafficking victims and survivors require long-term services and support beyond escape and rescue. High-profile arrests and shutting down SOBs do not address the root causes or trafficking and in many cases do little to address demand. While these efforts are important, and I strongly believe we need to advocate for increased prosecution of traffickers, these efforts must not exist in isolation but instead need to be part of a holistic anti-trafficking strategy. Otherwise, they are stop-gap measures at best and potentially counterproductive or harmful at worst.

Photograph by Van Ditthavong for the Texas Monthly

Why We Need the Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act

It is still a shock for many, that in a technologically advanced and a small world like ours, where we are separated from one another by only six degrees, slavery still exists. Some say it is not possible for such a hideous phenomenon to exist and even if it does exist, it is not possible for it to exist around us. We would've known about it, they say.

But the reality is that it does exist; it is all around us and it is part of our lives. It many not be just around us, but it may be in our homes and part of our lives - from the shoes we buy to tomatoes we eat. It is very possible that its existence plays a critical role in how we dress, what we eat, and how we live our lives. Problem - Global and Local International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that around 12.3 million adults and children are being trafficked at any given time. The majority of these people are women and girls forced into sexual servitude. One thing which is common across cases is that the society does not treat them as victims and in fact penalizes them.

Cases:

• When Maria was five, her father’s common-law wife started selling her for prostitution in Nicaragua. After a few years, NGO workers found Maria living in the city dump and took her to a home for little girls. She behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner with the other girls, as that was the only life she had ever known. She was asked to leave that children’s home. Maria was taken to another children’s home for her protection while investigators documented her abuse and worked to terminate her father’s parental rights.
  

• When Julia was 8, a man took her and her sisters to a neighboring country and forced them to beg on the streets until their early teens, when he sold them into prostitution. Julia’s traffickers expected her to bring in a certain amount of money each day or face beatings. At 14, Julia ran away, eventually coming under the supervision of local authorities. They placed her in an orphanage where she was not allowed to go to school due to her undocumented status. After a few months, Julia ran away from the orphanage and became involved with a pimp who prostituted her to local men and tourists. Recently, Julia was arrested on narcotics charges. She will likely spend the next two years in a juvenile prison, where she will finally learn to read and write.

• Many victims don’t know where to go for help when they escape from their traffickers or after they return home. A male victim of forced labor explains: “I knew nothing about the assistance available for trafficking victims. I didn’t know who to address in the destination country in case I needed help. I thought I could go only to the police. There I didn’t have enough courage to go to the police because the [traffickers] used to say that they bought the police. They threatened me with death in case I went to the police. I was afraid.”
  

• Approximately "seventy percent of all female prostitutes are victims of repeated rape by their male customers, on average thirty-one times a year." One young prostitute in New York was kidnapped by her client at knife-point and gang raped by five of his friends.

• Prostitutes are arrested more often than their pimps and customers and can face police brutality. This is particularly true for the prostitutes operating at the lowest level of the prostitution subculture—including those on the street and drug-addicted prostitutes. According to senior retired police officer Joe Haggarty, in order for a case to be prosecuted against a pimp, at least one of the pimp’s girls must testify, but many refuse. Despite their abuse, pimps provide a roof over the heads of their prostitutes, and the girls are often very loyal to their pimps. New York Police Detectives added that it is very difficult to have the chance to talk to prostituted girls because any statements made against the pimp could also incriminate the girls.
  

It is clear that most sexually exploited victims do not feel there is any way out. They feel like criminals! According to several sources and agencies, New York City is one of final destinations of human trafficking activities. National Institute of Justice estimates approximately 4,000 child sex trafficking victims in NYC. Some claim this is a conservative estimate!

U.S. Department of Justice released a report in January 2009, which said a) about 80% of the reported trafficking incidents involved sex trafficking, b) about 90% of the victims were female, c) about 30% of the sex trafficking incidents involved children, and d) about 60% of the sex trafficking victims were US citizens. The picture for victims of sex trafficking is worse: the world often fails to see them as victims. They are not treated like the victims of violence and human rights abuses that they are. We need better laws and better services for the victims.

This is what New York Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act is trying to do. The Act, which comes into effect in April 2010, is the nation's first such act which recognizes sexually exploited children as victims and offers them social services instead of punishing them. Both the Trafficking in Persons Report and the UN meeting with survivors of human trafficking have pointed out that the victims need a safe place to speak out and we need to help them break out of the cycle of fear.

In the next post, I will write about what we can look forward to regarding the impact of this act. I hope to interview NGOs and researchers to find out how they feel this act can help and if they feel it is sufficient do what we hope to do, which is to stop this abuse!

DOL to start certifying U Visa applications

From the Department of Labor:

US Labor Department to exercise authority to certify applications for U visas.

Action will help victims who aid law enforcement

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis . . . announced [on March 15th, 2010] that the U.S. Department of Labor will begin exercising its authority to certify applications for U Nonimmigrant Status Visas. U visas — as they are known — are designed to help victims of qualifying criminal activities who have suffered substantial physical or mental abuse and are willing to assist law enforcement or other government officials in the investigation or prosecution of those crimes.

"Regardless of immigration status, no one should have to suffer criminal abuse silently. U visas give some measure of security to immigrant victims who are desperate to escape an abusive situation and are willing to cooperate with law enforcement," said Secretary Solis. "I have instructed Labor Department investigators to identify potential U visa applicants as they conduct workplace investigations. This action will help local law enforcement rescue vulnerable immigrants from suffering and help put criminals behind bars."

Individuals who receive U visas may remain in the United States for up to four years and may eventually apply for permanent residency. The U visa was created by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000. Qualifying criminal activities involve violations of certain federal, state or local criminal laws, including: abduction, abusive sexual contact, blackmail, domestic violence, extortion, false imprisonment, female genital mutilation, felonious assault, hostage-taking, incest, involuntary servitude, kidnapping, manslaughter, murder, obstruction of justice, peonage, perjury, prostitution, rape, sexual assault, sexual exploitation, slave trade, torture, trafficking, witness tampering, unlawful criminal restraint and other related crimes.

Labor Department authority to certify U visas will be delegated to its Wage and Hour Division, which will identify potential applicants in appropriate circumstances during the course of workplace investigations. Among other U visa application requirements, a federal law enforcement agency or official must certify that the U visa petitioner has been helpful, is being helpful or is likely to be helpful in the investigation or prosecution of the criminal activity.

To view a fact sheet and more information about the certification of U visas, click here.

Read this news release en Español.

While the U Visa is not strictly for trafficking survivors, this is potentially big news for service providers, particularly legal service providers. The Department of Labor is involved in many investigations and task forces around the U.S., and the Wage & Hour Division's access to farms and workplaces make their inspectors particularly important eyes and ears for detecting trafficking. For those of you who are not familiar with the recent history of DOL inspectors, the number of inspectors plummeted and remained low during the last two decades. Just this year, the GAO released a report detailing their findings on the inadequacy of the Wage & Hour Division's Complaint Intake and Investigation Process, which the GAO felt left many low-wage workers unprotected. In addition to this new certification ability, the Obama administration earmarked funding to improve the Wage & Hour Division earlier this year.

South Africa Introduces Human Trafficking Bill Before 2010 World Cup

South African Justice Minister Jeff Radebe announced Tuesday that South Africa is planning to fast track a newly introduced anti-human trafficking bill before the World Cup, which starts in June.

The Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill creates new offenses, including trafficking in persons, debt bondage, possessing or destroying the travel documents of trafficking victims, using the services of trafficking victims, and facilitating human trafficking. Traffickers could face heavy fines or life imprisonment.

The bill will give courts jurisdiction over cases involving offenses committed outside of the country, as well as require internet service providers to report internet addresses suspected of containing information that facilitates or promotes human trafficking. The law also provides multiple protections for victims, including prohibiting prosecution of trafficking victims.

Radebe emphasized that the bill is not motivated by the World Cup and has "been a work in progress since 2003," but noted that 2010 will present its unique challenges because of the possibility of increased trafficking activity during the World Cup.

Human Trafficking Case Manager Position in Buffalo, New York

From the International Institute of Buffalo:

Clients: Victims of Human Trafficking

Salary: $25,000 + benefits

Position Description:The International Institute of Buffalo is seeking an Advocate Case Manager within its Trafficking Victim Services Program (TVSP). Under the supervision of the Director of Victim Services, the Case Manager’s primary responsibilities will include direct victim advocacy, crisis intervention, general intake and coordination of support services both on-site and within the Western New York community. The Advocate Case Manager will also work within the Victim Services Department to creatively evaluate and improve the effectiveness of this project in order to more comprehensively meet the complicated needs of this emerging population. On-call responsibilities occur periodically.

Applicants must have a strong ethic of service and dedication, and should be committed to being available to program activities outside of the normal 9-5 hours. Flexibility, emotional maturity, and resilience are required, along with excellent social and organizational skills that facilitate empathetic and open communication. Applicants must enjoy working closely with a small team while exhibiting initiative and independence. Experience, comfort, and sensitivity working in multi-cultural environments are required. Applicants fluent in a second language and those with experience in victim and trauma-related fields preferred.

Client Population:Most clients will be survivors of sex and/or labor trafficking. Clients will include foreign national survivors, particularly Asian, Latino, and African. Clients will have experienced significant trauma and will require intensive victim services.

Application: Please send resume and cover letter to International Institute of Buffalo Human Trafficking Victim Services, 864 Delaware Ave, Buffalo 14209 or email to afleischauer@iibuff.org by April 5, 2010.

For more information about the International Institute of Buffalo, please click here.