Katherine Franke of Columbia University’s Gender & Sexuality Law Blog says of a recent report on New York State’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights bill, which recently passed in the state Senate.

Frequently ignored in the debates about human trafficking is the vulnerability of the women (typically women of color and often immigrants with less than secure legal status) we pass every day on the street who are caring for other people’s children.  . . working conditions in many cases indistinguishable from those who the law would consider trafficked.  Because the labor of domestic workers is not primarily sexual in nature, their exploitation has been largely ignored . . . 2006 report: Home is where the work is: Inside New York’s Domestic Work Industry

Read the quote in context here.

Sure, it’s not as “sexy” as sex-trafficking and/or pimped prostitution, and since it’s about the way mostly affluent, mostly white people treat their servants and… um… slaves the issue is of no interest whatsoever to mostly white, mostly affluent conservative and neo-conservative “anti-trafficking” activists like Michael Horowitz, Laura Lederer or Donna M. Hughes. But any measure you care to waive about there are vastly fewer immigrant sex-workers than immigrant domestic workers (200,000 in New York City alone according to Domestic Workers United’s report “Home is Where the Work Is” (pdf). And by almost any measure you care to waive about there are more exploited, physically abused, and trafficked immigrant domestic workers than there are similarly trafficked sex workers.

Important: You’ll notice I’m not saying there are no trafficked or otherwise conscripted sex-workers in the U.S. Because, um, there are. Just that they’re only one segment of a much larger national scandal of abuse and exploitation.

Even more important: Gee, I wonder if the genteel obsession with “white slavery,” to the exclusion of everything else, has something to do with the generally socially very conservative and neoconservative nature of the activists involved? And gee, I wonder if there’s any conceivable correlation between the social-conservative and neoconservative indifference to non-sex slavery on the one hand, and their visceral antagonism towards the domestic, industrial, and agricultural unions who tend to champion the rights of exploited non-sexually trafficked? Nah, there’ couldn’t be a connection there.

And hmm… no way they’d object to harm reduction and/or legalization of sex workers (let alone undocumented immigrants in general) just because, say, SEIU or other service-related unions would almost certainly work towards organizing them. Right?

According to Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.) of Criminal Justice Online

Florida Couple Charged in Forced Labor and Document Servitude Conspiracies

April 28, 2010 – WASHINGTON – Sophia Manuel and Alfonso Baldonado Jr. have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges arising from a human trafficking scheme to hold Filipino nationals in forced labor in country clubs and hotels in Southeast Florida, the Justice Department announced.

According to the indictment, defendants Manuel, 41, and Baldonado, 46, owners of Quality Staffing Services Corporation of Boca Raton, Fla., conspired to obtain a cheap, compliant and readily available labor pool. The indictment details the defendants conspired to hold the workers in their continued service, for little or no pay, and housed them in substandard conditions without adequate food or drinking water.

The indictment alleges that the defendants used false promises to entice the Filipino nationals to incur debts to pay up-front recruitment fees; and then compelled the workers to remain in the defendants’ service, despite inadequate work or income to pay off the debts, using a scheme of threats to have the workers arrested and deported with no way to repay their debts, confiscation of the workers’ passports and rules and controls restricting the workers’ freedom of movement and communications with outsiders.

He said it here.

But wait, from the same website there’s more

Arlington, Texas Couple Convicted of Forced Labor and Other Crimes for Holding Nigerian Woman in Domestic Servitude

February 3, 2010 – WASHINGTON—A federal jury has convicted an Arlington, Texas husband and wife Emmanuel and Ngozi Nnaji of engaging in a nine-year scheme to compel the labor of a Nigerian victim as their domestic servant, the Justice Department announced today. The jury found the defendants guilty of conspiracy, forced labor, document servitude, alien harboring and false statements. Ngozi and Emmanuel Nnaji each face a maximum sentence of up to 55 years in prison.

According to the evidence at trial, Emmanuel Nnaji and Ngozi Nnaji enticed a widowed Nigerian mother of six to come to the United States to be their domestic servant by falsely promising a salary and support for her children, who she was struggling to support.

“Holding other human beings in servitude against their will is a violation of human rights that will not be tolerated in our free society,” stated Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “This prosecution demonstrates our commitment to combating human trafficking in all its forms, vindicating the rights of trafficking victims and bringing human traffickers to justice.”

He said it here.

But wait, there’s still more

Two Brothers Plead Guilty in Conspiracy to Hold Thai Workers in Forced Labor in Hawaii

Defendants Alec Sou and Mike Sou, co-owners of Aloun Farm, pleaded guilty on Jan.13, 2010, in federal district court in Honolulu, to conspiring to commit forced labor. The two defendants, who are brothers, each face up to five years in prison for their respective roles in a labor trafficking scheme that held Thai agricultural workers in service at Aloun Farm through a scheme of debts, threats, and restraint.

During their respective plea hearings, the defendants acknowledged that they conspired with one another and with others to hold 44 Thai men in forced labor on a farm operated by the defendants, using a scheme of physical restraint and threats of serious harm to intimidate the workers and hold them in fear of attempting to leave the defendants’ service.

“Holding other human beings in servitude against their will is a violation of individual rights that is intolerable in a free society,” stated Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “This prosecution demonstrates our commitment to combating human trafficking in all its forms, vindicating the rights of trafficking victims, and bringing human traffickers to justice.”

He said it here.

Now why, you might ask, would I be talking about all this domestic, agricultural, sexual, and labor servitude, a.k.a. human trafficking on a nice morning in May, 2010?

One big reason derives from a companion piece to the Dreams Die Hard documentary about trafficking and involuntary servitude in the United States from Free The Slaves. The companion piece is called the Dreams Die Hard Study Guide. In the section “What Happens to Slaves?” the following bullet point really stood out.

When they turn to officials, trafficking victims may get harsh treatment if the police officer or immigration staff regards the escaped victim as an illegal immigrant. Although some law enforcement officials have immediately rescued and protected people in slavery, there have been tragic situations where police simply failed to recognize slavery. Proper training is crucial.

Source: Pg. 3

It just made me wonder how much better off Arizona’s de facto slave owners are now that the state legislature has made it even more illegal to be an undocumented immigrant. And, given the gleeful promises of ever-more draconian enforcement by sadists like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, how much further is this law going to shift the balance of power even further in the direction of those who already abuse trafficked people.

—-

Note: I was inspired to write this post by search results that showed up while I was trying to verify whether the authors of the website Citizens Against Trafficking were living up to their claim that they’re “a broad based coalition formed in 2009 to combat all forms of human trafficking.”

The short answer appears to be no: they instead appear to have been primarily opposed to prostitution, which they say is a hotbed of trafficking, and only in the state of Rhode Island. They were particularly opposed to a loophole in Rhode Island that made some forms of prostitution legal there.

The law has recently been amended, with much applause and support from the website’s authors: it’s now as illegal to be a sex-worker in Rhode Island as it is to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona. With what will turn out to be, I’m afraid, similar consequences for sex workers.

As I’ve mentioned relatively often I personally don’t care much for sex work in the current dominant paradigm since I believe, strongly, that it reinforces rather than relieves our expectations that all sex between men and women is ultimately transactional. And I strongly regret when people cross borders illegally. On the other hand I don’t think either sex work nor immigration ought to be illegal primarily because it increases rather than mitigates the underworld environments serious anti-traffickers are concerned puts victims most at risk — whether they’re “massage parlor” workers in Rhode Island, or “nannies” in Maryland, or “lettuce pickers” in Arizona.

KJ of ImmigrationProf Blog says

The University of Pennsylvania Law Review will hold a conference on “Trafficking in Sex and Labor: Domestic and International Responses November” on November 13-14, 2009 at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA. Human trafficking is currently a major global concern. Rates of trafficking, slavery, and involuntary servitude continue to increase, and the global economic crisis is expected to worsen the problem while frustrating efforts at prevention, prosecution, and remediation. Trafficking also touches upon a broad array of domestic and international legal issues, from policies on immigration and prostitution to gender equality and the problem of violence against women. The issue is currently under active debate in Congress and is likely to receive renewed focus with the change of administration in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania Law Review Symposium will address trafficking in persons—the transportation of people across national borders, often through the use of force, coercion, fraud, or duplicity—from a domestic and international perspective.

KJ

Read the quote in context here.

(Via Google Alerts on the keyword “sex trafficking.”)

Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors says

Wouldn’t you think the media would be a little more invested in figuring out why Ling and Lee were considered threats by North Korea? It’s because they were investigating sex trafficking for Current TV, as only briefly noted in this NYT article, which states: “It ended a harrowing ordeal for the two women, who were stopped on March 17 by soldiers near North Korea’s border with China while researching a report about women and human trafficking.”

She said it here.

To be perfectly honest no, I don’t think the press was so much not invested in the trafficking angle as they were in the much more operatic “ZOMG North Korea’s Got Kim Jong-il and Teh Bomb.” An oldie but goldie for the press since the lead up to the Korean War in the 1950s.

That’s not to say the situation for North Korean migrants in China isn’t really, really dire. They caught firmly in classic political and economic shears: on the one hand there’s no, zero, none opportunity in North Korea and a fairly substantial chance of outright starvation; on the other hand it’s particularly illegal to migrate without documentation to China from Korea, and the penalty (being “repatriated”) brings gruesome penalties at home. Consequently migrants there, like, say, undocumented Romanian migrants in Italy or undocumented Haitian migrants in Florida are extraordinarily vulnerable to sexual or other forms of labor exploitation. Something about “all I have to do is contact the authorities and you’ll be dead in a month” that really gives employers… or for that matter random-but-documented passers by… extraordinary leverage in negotiating, um, tasks and wages.

When the border in question separates cultures which both have strikingly awful human rights records and indifferent to bad attitudes towards women in particular then yeah, good for Lee and Ling for putting their lives on the line to shine light on the situation. Now that they’re home, and once they’re rested, I hope Lee and Ling will have an opportunity to write not only about their experiences in custody but also about the topics they went into jeopardy to cover in the first place.