[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 23, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E523-E524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


   INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO COMBAT THE CRIME OF INTERNATIONAL 
          TRAFFICKING AND TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE VICTIMS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 23, 1999

  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a bill to combat 
the crime of international trafficking, a fundamental violation of 
human rights to which this Nation has a responsibility to act.
  Trafficking involves the use of deception, coercion, abuse of 
authority, debt bondage, or

[[Page E524]]

fraud to exploit persons through forced prostitution, sexual slavery, 
sweatshop labor, or domestic servitude. Faced with difficult times in 
their home countries, women are often lured by advertisements for job 
opportunities overseas. Women will often answer these ads hoping to 
make enough money to take care of their families and fulfill their 
dreams in far away places. Unfortunately, these dreams soon turn into 
nightmares as the women have their passports seized, are sold for 
profit, and then forced to sell their bodies to recover the cost of a 
debt they did not incur. In many cases, they are constantly monitored 
and supervised to prevent them from escaping. Trafficked women are 
often subject to physical and mental abuse including, but not limited 
to battery, cruelty, and rape.
  The legislation I am introducing today builds on my efforts over the 
past several years to bring attention to the problem of trafficking, 
particularly with respect to the sale of Burmese women and children 
into brothels in Thailand. Unfortunately, as we learn more about this 
problem, it is becoming tragically clear that trafficking knows no 
national or regional borders. Throughout the regions of Southeast Asia, 
as well as within a number of nations across the former Soviet Union 
and Warsaw Pact, criminal organizations are capitalizing on poverty, 
rising unemployment, and the disintegration of social networks to 
exploit and abuse women and children.
  This legislation would create an Interagency Task Force to Monitor 
and Combat Trafficking within the Office of Secretary of State, that 
would submit an annual report to Congress on: (1) The identification of 
states involved in trafficking; (2) the complicity of any governmental 
officials in those states; (3) the efforts those states are making to 
combat trafficking; (4) the provision of assistance to victims of 
trafficking; and (5) the level of international cooperation by such 
states in internal investigations of trafficking. It would also bar 
police assistance to governments that are involved in this practice, 
and would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow 
trafficking victims brought to the United States to remain here for 
three months so that they may put their lives back together and at the 
same time testify against their traffickers in both civil and criminal 
proceedings.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me and Senator Wellstone, 
who has introduced the Senate companion legislation, in supporting this 
bill to end the abhorrent practice of trafficking both home and abroad.

                          ____________________