[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 153 (Thursday, September 25, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H9948]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               HUMAN TRAFFICKING ON THE NORTHWEST BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Sali) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SALI. Madam Speaker, the country we live in is far too big to see 
all at once, and many of us have only heard stories of some of its 
subcultures, hidden treasures, and the uniqueness of thousands of local 
communities.
  One world that some of us never see is the dark world of human 
trafficking. Because trafficked persons look just like the rest of us, 
it is a difficult world to perceive. And yet, this underground global 
economy in persons is thought to involve as much as $132 billion a 
year, with profits from its trade reaching over $200 billion.
  This sordid culture, to which most of us are happily blind, crosses 
all national boundaries, including our own. Perhaps the most widely 
recognized form is sex trafficking of women into prostitution, but we 
must also recognize the trafficking of migrant workers, who are often 
deceived into leaving their homelands into forced, brutal labor without 
travel documents that give them the identity with which to escape. 
There is also the forcible use of children to beg for street gangs or 
work in dangerous conditions, and what I think is the most disgusting, 
the recent trend of Western tourists engaging in child sex tourism, 
traveling the world looking for children who are being held in 
prostitution by their captors.
  We like to think that we live in a modern and modernizing world, 
where barbarism is merely a bad memory. Yet, raw evil persists in our 
time. Ignoring human trafficking only pulls a shade over an already 
dark practice. But ignoring it makes it no less real and no less 
horrifying.
  The State Department's 2008 Trafficking in Human Persons Report 
reveals the truth, but sickens us at the same time. The report quotes 
one self-justifying American schoolteacher about his child sex tourism, 
``I'm helping them financially. If they don't have sex with me, they 
may not have enough food. If someone has a problem with me doing this, 
let UNICEF feed them.''
  America is not great because we are perfect or because we refuse to 
accept injustice when we see it. Child soldiers, 8-year old 
prostitutes, domestic slavery, this is all real, and you can read about 
it in the State Department's report. The problem does not go away when 
we close our eyes, so it is imperative that we open them and act on 
this problem.
  It's easy to think of this as a Third World problem. The numbers and 
the brutality are best gazed at from a distance, when we can shake our 
heads in horror and promptly change the channel to a different station. 
However, according to the State Department: The U.S. is a destination 
country for thousands of men, women, and children trafficked largely 
from East Asia, Mexico, and Central America for the purposes of labor 
and sexual exploitation. The Trafficking Victims Prevention Act of 2000 
has been a great step forward in this fight, its purpose being to 
punish traffickers, protect victims, and prevent future trafficking.
  While the number of prosecutions has gone up and steps clearly have 
been taken to help the victims, we can make a significant move to 
prevent trafficking by ensuring that the U.S. is not a destination 
country. One way to further this goal is to create a Northwest 
Trafficking Task Force to coordinate these efforts on our Northwestern 
border, running across Washington, Idaho, and Montana. This thousand-
mile border is often patrolled merely on horseback. Without adequate 
resources, we cannot effectively fight this problem; we must catch it 
at the border.
  We are morally responsible to ensure the God-given dignities of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this country. We must have the 
vigilance to keep watch over these freedoms so that no form of human 
bondage is accepted or ignored.
  I humbly ask my colleagues to open their eyes, consider these facts, 
and stand with me against this horror of human trafficking here at 
home.

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