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Labor Trafficking: The ​basics

How does labor trafficking begin?Who are the traffickers?Who are the victims?Why don’t victims just leave?

How does labor trafficking begin?

Labor trafficking most often begins with a simple job offer. It becomes trafficking when pay or working conditions are abusive and the worker cannot quit or complain because the boss is threatening them or exploiting their desperate economic circumstances. Kidnapping or physical force are rarely part of how labor trafficking situations begin.

Who are the traffickers?

Traffickers can be business owners, bosses, or other workers with a managerial role in a formal business. Traffickers can also be victims’ families or legal guardians, including parents, spouses and intimate partners.

Who are the victims?

Anyone can be victimized by a labor trafficker, but certain people are far more vulnerable than others. Economic need is a key risk factor and immigrants – including immigrants who are in this country legally – are particularly vulnerable to labor trafficking.

Why don’t victims just leave?

The most common ways traffickers control victims are through threats or economic abuse. Immigrants are vulnerable to labor trafficking because many have arrived in another country due to violence or extreme poverty in their home countries. Additionally, many labor trafficking victims are tied to traffickers by debt and the belief that even the minimum amount paid to them is better than their other options.


Migrants, Immigrants, and Domestic Work

Recruitment and Grooming: 

A diplomat entices a person from her home country with an offer to come to the United States (for example) and take care of his children. She is promised a good salary and the opportunity to go to school here. The diplomat repeatedly tells the worker how lucky she is for the opportunity she would never have in her country. If she returns home without having completed the job, she will feel ashamed because many people in her community are desperate for better opportunities.


Coercion and control: 

It is the facilitation of the illegal entry of a person into a State of which said person is not a national or permanent resident, in order to obtain a financial or other material benefit, in most cases the entry is with documents. illegal or without complying with the requirements requested by law. Human trafficking only occurs when a border is crossed.


Departure: 

The worker secretly makes a phone call to a community center for people from her country and receives help. The trafficker is never punished.

Housework in Marriage

Recruitment and Grooming:

A man from a conservative, patriarchal society promises a poor girl's family that he will marry her and take care of her in another country. She has been raised all her life knowing that she will be in an arranged marriage.


Coercion and Control: Once there, the woman is forced to take care of her husband's children from another relationship, take care of the house, work in the family business, and not leave the house. She has no money and does not speak the language. Her husband tells her that if she complains, her family will be ashamed and he will ruin his sister's chances of having a good marriage.


Departure:

The wife befriends someone in her religious community (the only place she is allowed to socialize) and the friend helps her find a lawyer.

Exploitation of disabilities


Recruitment: A couple befriends a woman with a developmental disability and promises her safety and shelter in return for help around the house.


Coercion and control: The victim is put to work in a family business for long hours every day and not paid. She is told if she doesn’t like it, they will send her to a halfway house that is more like a prison. They cash her disability check monthly.


Exit: The victim’s family, who has lost track of her, finds her and brings her home.

Exploitation of addiction



Recruitment: A person struggling to stay clean from drugs joins a spiritual community that lives under the guidance of a charismatic leader.


Coercion and control: The formerly addicted person is put to work making and selling crafts in abusive conditions for no pay. Those who complain are expelled from the community, which they have come to depend upon in order to maintain sobriety.


Exit: The victim collapses from exhaustion and hospital staff recognize she needs help and connect her with services.


Fraudulent job offers


Recruitment and grooming:

A mid-level manager from India is offered a dream job that sounds like a promotion in another country. When the family arrives here, the trafficker tricks them out of their savings, takes out a loan in their name, and then tells them they are working in the back room of a restaurant washing dishes.


Coercion and control: The family is not getting paid and has no money to escape. The trafficker tells them that if they complain to the police they will be arrested and separated from their children because they entered the country illegally.


Exit: One of the children's teachers notices that they do not have winter coats and goes to visit the family. They confide in her, and she helps them seek legal assistance.


Recruitment fees and debt bondage


Recruitment and grooming:

A 25-year-old man from an Indigenous community in Mexico learns on social media about a job at a farm in the United States. The job comes with a legal, temporary visa and is well paid. In his hometown, most of the adults take these kinds of jobs overseas for half the year to support their families.


Coercion and control:

He is told by the recruiter that it costs $5,000 for the visa but the advertised wages make it worthwhile, so the worker borrows the money from his new employer. When he gets here, he is told he is working off the debt the business owner incurred bringing him here and will not be paid for the first several months of work. Soon, his boss begins charging him for water, lunch, and transportation to and from the work site. His debt is increasing at a rate that will be extremely difficult to pay back. If he leaves, he will have no way to pay back the money he borrowed. The boss tells him he will be barred from ever returning on a legal visa. Although there is no such thing as an official blacklist, the worker knows that his boss knows many of the recruiters who come to his town, so it would be impossible to get work in the future. He feels he has no choice but to stay and try to pay off the debt.


Exit:

Too concerned about being blacklisted for the future, the worker decides to just get through the abusive situation and try for a better position next year. His parents have to sell their home and move in with relatives to pay their debt.


Human trafficking does not necessarily have to involve moving from one place to another. A person can be trafficked in their own home. This myth is problematic because confusing trafficking with human smuggling leads to solutions in the name of combating trafficking that have no relation to how trafficking actually occurs, such as building a wall between the United States and Mexico.