Human trafficking must stop

[dkf]

http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorials/20100907_Human_trafficking_must_stop.html

The recent prosecution of the owners of the Ewa Plain's Aloun Farms on forced labor charges appeared to be an isolated case. Now, however, expansion of the FBI investigation involving numerous farms using Thai labor in Hawaii and on the mainland reveals otherwise. What is being called the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted in the U.S. is an important step in the global effort to eliminate modern slavery.

A federal grand jury in Honolulu has indicted six people associated with a Los Angeles-based contractor, which also is faced with civil lawsuits alleging labor violations and contract breaches with Hawaii farms.

The indictment alleges that about 400 workers were threatened with deportation and economic stress if they did not accept the terms of their employment.

Nearly a decade has passed since more than 100 countries signed onto a protocol in Palermo, Italy, aimed at preventing, suppressing and punishing human trafficking. The Palermo Protocol was aimed mainly at the trafficking of women and children, but it included abuse of other economically exploited workers.

In Thailand, which signed on to the protocol in 2001, workers have been migrating for low-skilled contract work abroad, including the United States. Many have been subjected to forced labor and debt bondage, according to this year's annual report by the U.S. State Department on human trafficking.

Last week's indictment says Thai nationals were brought to the U.S. in 2004 and 2005 through a federal agricultural guest worker program. They then were forced to pay high recruitment fees and, having been stripped of their passports and visas, threatened with deportation back to Thailand, where they would continue to face severe problems created by the debts incurred by having used family land as collateral to pay the recruitment fees.

[McCamy Taylor]

1. Florida still uses Black "slave" labor of the born in America kind. No one on the right

gives a flying fuck about them. So, they are unlikely to feel more than delight at the plight of folks from other countries.

[dkf]

2. In what way are they "slave labor"?