Human trafficking and agencies

[Jeff Mowatt]

Perhaps some of you guys can help me out here.  I'm engaged in a  discussion elswhere about  this subject with  a group who  are  trying to fight it. I'm suggesting that the Marriage Brokers  Act of 2005 is no solution.

I'm making the point that  marriage agencies are an unlikely place  to find such activity and that more likely recruiters will be operating  covertly advertising in the local language, if the internet is used at  all.

Can anyone refer me to sites such as those that are offering jobs for  attractive young women overseas that I can use to illustrate my point?

Jeff    

[andrewfi]

Very hard to find such sites as the advertising is usually in print media and, of course, in a language that you do not understand.

There is significant documentation from numerous secondary sources that implicate marriage agencies in human trafficking. Of course, the MOB business IS people traficking... Just because the trade is voluntary and, in some cases, legal does not refute the existance of the trade.

One of the reasons that Belarus took strong action against marriage and modeling agencies was that there was significant movement of women through them, some 10,000 per year, IIRC. The Phillipines took similar action several years ago. It is unlikley that Belarus would have taken action without perceived cause although it is also possible that their actions may prove a tad counterproductive; they were under considerable pressure from the UN and other governments to take action.

I do not know too much about the marriage agency broker act, but I understand its prime purpose is to ensure that incoming women know what they are getting into. To that degree, it must help women and thus have an effect, even if small. In practice, most of these women are doing it for the money, they know they are engaged in a risky act, all this can do is reduce, slightly, the risk, they were engagedin this trade before the act and will still be there after the act. The only surefire means of reducing the volume of people trafficking is increased economic opportunity in the country of origin. When women can acheive their economic goals without having to move country and marry a stranger, they will not any longer do so. It is interesting to note the effective removal of the Czech Republic and Estonia from the MOB business, as the economic climate has shifted. The same process can be seen in Russia, ask any reputable agency owner, operating in Russia, and they will tell you that it is now very hard to find fresh stock.

Can you imagine a woman choosing NOT to sell herself to a foreign guy becasue she gets a pamphlet? She might choose to avoid a particular guy, based upon what she reads of his profile, but the more desperate ones will not be put off, especially if her plan does not involve a long term relationship anyway!

Based upon what I have read, it would seem that the act is not a solution, on its own. That was not its purpose. It is a part of a range of measures that need to be taken in both host and destination countries. Increasingly, those measures are being taken, although, sadly, the measures taken as a whole, tend to ignore the wishes and needs of those who, largely voluntarily, sell themselves.

Al the above said, telling a woman that the outcome of her adventure might not be quite as she hoped is no bad thing! I bet they will take as much note of it as the men do!:X

[Vaughn]

Jeff,

 Here's a fairly recent (and outrageous) example from a Department of Justice site, where Lev Trakhtenberg imported many young women under a guise other than marriage: visa petitions related to entertainment. As far as I'm concerned, this dirtbag didn't get nearly enough time behind bars...

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nj/publicaffairs/NJ_Press/files/trak0603_r.htm

Search his name, you'll get several hits. A "DOJ human trafficking" google might yield what you're searching for, but only in retrospect. I agree with andrewfin that print media is where the recruitment likely begins.

Vaughn 

[Jeff Mowatt]

Thanks guys. Yes, indeed that 's exactly the point about language I'd  been trying to make to those who consider agencies involved in  trafficking, that  from the perspective  of effective   marketing  it wouldn't  make much sense  doing it   via the medium of an English language website.

 Though I don't necessarily want to debate it here amongst the  more informed, because I'm sure its been gone over many times,  I  was hoping to find  Russian language sites which promoted  employment in overseas entertainment.  As  suggested,  newspaper ads would probably be more likely.

Just to make it clear what I'm trying to convey. I'm asserting that  legislation which aims at soft targets and stigmatises the  many  in the hope of  weeding out the few is social divisive   and  stands to do more harm than good in the long term.
    

[ronin308]

Jeff while I agree with you to a point, in my opinion there are some things in the MBA that do belong.  The limitations of visas is a good idea as is the idea that the potential bride gets and idea of their potential spouses criminal history (but after they meet not before).

As to human trafficing I hit on many different websites that cover this.  The bottomline is that as Andrew points out even though agencies participate in voluntary trafficing, you don't find many are involved involuntarily.

As to how the trafficers get their "cargo" you have to go beyond just media advertising, although print ads in Russian would be a good place to start.  In addition to this is word of mouth which is even more powerful and undocumented way to go.  In fact some of the girls who were victimized and come back to their home countries to act as recruiters as well. 

[ronin308]

With respect to the MBA fighting trafficing that's a big joke.  The majority of the prostitutes in Isreal are Ukrainian yet there are very few sites dedicated to helping Isreali men date FSU women.

The same is true in other areas where you find the highest number of involuntarily trafficed women.  Turkey and the rest of the middle east as an example.  The US a huge target of marriage sites has a relatively low number of trafficed women compared to other countries in the world.  The same can be said of europe with the exception of prostitution hotspots, but generally those women are recruited via ads for nannies and maids.

[andrewfi]

It is not unreasonable to include women who marry foreign guys through agencies as being trafficked. People trafficking is about the movement of people for economic reasons. It is not about coercion or otherwise and it is wrong to assume that trafficking is only about overt prostitution. Essentially, I suppose that traficking in people can be regarded as the facilitation of the movement of people from one country to another for the economic benefit of one or both parties in the process (the trafickee and facilitator)

The US, as it happens, is NOT the major destination for women traficked in marriage, that honour goes to Europe.

As I noted above, this law is only a part of a multi-faceted package of actions. I mentioned the supply side issues; I guess I should have mentined the demand side issues - addressing the reasons why a group of men, not a large group, feel so alienated and afraid from of and from their own peers that marriage to a strange, poor foreign woman is an attractive choice!

 

[Jeff Mowatt]

Andrew,

There is a problem with  the defintion of trafficking. What you and I  understand  in English has to some extent been redefined to make it  specific to coerced activity. Smuggling on the other hand which I'd  always associated with concealment appears to  be quite different. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking

Background checks  I think are  reasonable, that 's  not  my issue. I was rather amazed at the  ease with which I could  bring a woman and 2 children to the UK without any formal  check  on my background.  I am concerned purely with the stigma of  economic migration which governments attempt to associate with   foreign brides or any potential visitor.

The US  offers much the same  stance as the UK  did with  its Primary Purpose  rule,  which  sought to limit the  movement of people from economically disadvantaged regions on the basis  of their poverty. The implication being that being poor made it more  likely that you would commit visa deception. 

http://kiev.usembassy.gov/amcit_marriage_brokers_eng.html

Though I know of one individual who took this on in our courts and won  in the case of a girlfriend from the Phillipines, I have personal  experience of  an American  being refused  entry on this  basis in spite of his impeccable past behaviour.  

[Turboguy]

I can agree with the background checks but with a little advertising of the fact would it not make more sense to do it at the visa level.  If the law required anyone with a domestic abuse conviction or criminal record could be granted a visa unless they had properly disclosed the fact at the start of communication.   I would think that we are talking about a very small percentage of the population who activly seek a foreign bride so it would eleminate the hastle for a lot of guys and simplify life for the agencys.  Of course whatever I think makes no real difference anyway.

[andrewfi]

Jef ~ Wikipedia is fun to read, but I would not rely upon it in an academic or other serious forum...

The reality is that MOST trafficking is not coercive, it is voluntary. The issues come in respect of the difference between expectation and reality of those involved. If you were to try to find, for example, a prostitute who was kidnapped fromn the street of her home town, you would find that such cases simply are irrelevantly few.

But, if you were to seek a woman who married a stranger, through a marriage agency, and who found the outcome very different to that which she hoped, or to find a would-be prostitute who knowingly signed up with an agency to travel to another coutnry as a 'dancer' but who then found that the reality of being a prostitute was very different to her idealised vision, then you will find very many.

The attempt to match up the reality and dream is something that is now being done in the US and has been done in, for example, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine for several years. The more women who know that marrying a stranger with whom they share nothing, not evenlanguage, is fraught with distress, hopefully the fewer wil do it. The more women who are told that being a prostitute is a dirty, degrading business the better. But all the time agencies have to fight the reality that for a woman from a Moldavian village earning, waht for an American man, is a pittance of perhaps $400 or $500 per month as a hooker, is a life changing fortune for the woman.

The bottom line is, as I wrote already, the new act is JUST a PART of the fight against people trafficking and is thus, probably justifiable.

There have been attempts to define people trafficking, recognising it as not the same as people smuggling. There is a definition from the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children which supplements the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The UN Protocol defines trafficking in persons as: "…the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation." The definition includes exploitation for prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. It is easy to see how it is that the activities of marriage agencies may fall under the purview of the UN protocol and how it can be that marriage agencies may be seen as a useful front for trafficking operations. Given that coercion is not really an issue for most hookers and mail order brides, the rest of the terms apply pretty well! The new US act does take some sensible actions in respect of some of the relevant terms: reducing the abuse of power, reducing the ability to deceive, reducing the scope for fraud (albeit increasing the scope for fraud in new ways!)

[Turboguy]

Perhaps you are right Andrewfin but I have seen a lot of tv programs and read a lot of magazine articles about this subject and the examples they give are always women taken against their will and held in virtual slavery.

If a woman decides she wants to be a prostitue and is unhappy with the money she is making or thinks the house is not a comforable as she would like, I don't have much sympaty for her.   What is see in the programs and articles is more like a 18 year old girl who goes to a modeling tryout, get picked and has dreams of her photo being on the cover of Cosmopolitin only to be taken to a far away land, beaten, raped, to have her money and passport taken, told if she tries to leave her family will be killed and help prisoner and forced to work as a prostitute.  When she finally gets free she has no money, no future and vd.  That I have all kinds of sympathy for.

[LostInIllinois]

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nj/publicaffairs/NJ_Press/files/trak0603_r.htm

This article has nothing to do about the K-1 or K-3 visa process.  It clearly states that these women were brought to the US under some sort of performing arts visa

-N

[andrewfi]

TG ~ There are very good reasons why you read these stories. Let us try a few on for size.

1) 'She would say that wouldn't she!' Very few women will, in public and on camera tell anyone that they voluntarily upped sticks to go and work in a German brothel. Coercion is an easy and sympathy provoking story to use when she is picked up by police, NGO do-gooders or immigration teams.

2) Violence sells. Would Mr and Mrs Midwesthardofthinking prefer to watch a salacious news story involving violence and coercion or would they prefer to see a stroy of a woman making a better life for herslef by renting out her body? Watch the news to see the answer!

3) When a woman from a small village goes away to work as a cleaner for a couple of years and comes back with enough money to buy a home and start a business, she is a heroine. If people knew she was a prostitute she would not be the heroine any longer. These girls conceal their time overseas as much as they can.

4) Stories of coercion fit nicely into the 'commercial sex is bad and immoral' ethos prevalent in many countries, particularly yours, at this time.

5) On the other hand, consider this: It is MUCH easier to get people to travel willingly, to pay them a small amount out of their earnings and allow them to go home after their debts have been paid off. In this business, honesty works. I know, from friends, about some of this stuff. It is not always pretty, but it is not as usually described. When a girl travels, on false pretences, there are costs incurred. The girls usually have no money abd thus money is spent by the 'agents' upfront. Often times, girls will try to renege on their commitments. The only leverage that the agentshave is to withold travel documents, so they do. When debts have been paid off, they get the documetns back. If a girl travels on her own ticket, then it is very unlikely that a passport will be witheld, although there may well still be costs incurred and needing to be repaid, but the air ticket is usually the biggest item.

6) Most recruiting is by word of mouth. Get bad word of mouth and get fewer girls. Girls here know who the good agents and who are bad.

7) There is some coercion and there is some violence.