Human Trafficking in America

[proud2BlibKansan]

For six months Kansas City Star reporters traveled the world, from Guatemalan migrant shelters to the deadly streets of Tijuana, investigating America's war against human trafficking.

They found that America is losing the battle — even in its own backyard. In fact, Kansas City is an emerging hub of human trafficking activity.

Today: Day 1: A new slavery

U.S. system to find, help victims of human trafficking is broken
By MIKE McGRAW and LAURA BAUER
The Kansas City Star

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” — 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified Dec. 6, 1865

Sebastian Pereria told a friend last year about his life in America.

How he wanted to see his wife and children in India, but his boss kept his identification papers and wouldn’t let him go.

Other waiters who worked with him at a Topeka restaurant told of how they were forced to work 13-hour days, six days a week. They talked of how the boss underpaid them and pocketed their tips.

In the end, Pereria, 46, got his wish. He finally arrived home last year.

In a coffin.

more , , , http://www.kansascity.com/944/story/1626936.html

more . . .

[lightningandsnow]

1. THANK YOU for posting this.

Having studied trafficking policy, the system is very broken. It almost entirely concentrates on sex trafficking, both harming consensual sex workers including those who have crossed borders to engage in sex work, and ignoring trafficked people who are not trafficked for sex.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. There's an interesting video posted

http://www.kansascity.com/

[niyad]

3. k and r for this disturbing and informative post.

[Shallah Kali]

4. ACLU sues to stop Catholic bishops from restricting trafficking victims’ access to birth control

Strings Attached
ACLU sues to stop Catholic bishops from restricting trafficking victims’ access to birth control and abortion
http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2009/StringsAttached.asp

IN AN EFFORT TO GET VICTIMS of sex or labor trafficking back on their feet, the U.S. government provides up to $600 a month in medical care, shelter, food, psychotherapy, job training and other services. But if the women victims need contraception, reproductive counseling or abortion services? Sorry.

That’s because most federal grants to anti-trafficking organizations are doled out by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, per a 2006 contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (see “The Invisible Ones,” Summer 2007). And the bishops make subgrantees pledge not to “provide referral for abortion services or contraceptive materials.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is now suing the government for breaching the First Amendment with this policy. “This is an obvious transgression of the separation between church and state,” says Brigitte Amiri, the ACLU’s lead lawyer. “ The government can’t allow its grantees to impose their religious beliefs on subgrantees.”

Doing so, the suit states, is also not good practice in aiding victims of sex and labor trafficking, who are mostly women and at high risk for rape and forced pregnancy—tactics traffickers often use as means of control. “We get clients that come to us directly with reproductive health needs or concerns,” confirms one anti-trafficking organization’s director, speaking anonymously because her group relies on the bishops’ subgrants. “It’s not just happening in sex trafficking but also in labor trafficking, because unfortunately people in those situations are getting physically battered and sexually assaulted.”

In addition to the ban, leaders of anti-trafficking groups criticize the bishops’ entire grant system, which involves up to $6 million a year. The per capita structure—requiring monthly applications from anti-trafficking groups on a per-victim basis—has left the groups strapped for cash, without job security for employees and forced to handle mountains of paperwork. Moreover, the bishops are six months behind on payments: “It’s like we’re providing an interest-free loan to the government—we can’t afford that,” said the anonymous source.

[gula]

5. A must read, and don't skip pages 3 & 4.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Agreed

[lpbk2713]

6. Harvest of Shame

It's been almost fifty years since Ed Murrow made his documentary.

Murrow focused on migrant agricultural workers but the story is the same.

Cesar Chavez died too soon. Murrow did too.

[Cleita]

8. As long as we keep calling these people law breakers or illegals,

they won't have any rights. I wish there was a legal organization like the ACLU but that concentrates on aliens to figure out what their rights are and to help them obtain them, maybe even a legal green card if the right criteria were met and definitely to prosecute the scum that take advantage of their situation.

[Shallah Kali]

9. kick

:kick: