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LABOR TRAFFICKING IN TROUBLED ECONOMIC 

TIMES: PROTECTING AMERICAN JOBS AND 

MIGRANT HUMAN RIGHTS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND 

COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 23, 2011 

Printed for the use of the 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 

[CSCE 112–1–4] 

( 

Available via http://www.csce.gov 
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

HOUSE SENATE 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, 

Chairman 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida 

LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER, 

New York 

MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, 

Co-Chairman 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

ROBERT F. WICKER, Mississippi 

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

MICHAEL H. POSNER, Department of State 

MICHAEL C. CAMUN ̃ EZ, Department of Commerce 

ALEXANDER VERSHBOW, Department of Defense 

[II] 
LABOR TRAFFICKING IN TROUBLED ECONOMIC 

TIMES: PROTECTING AMERICAN JOBS AND 

MIGRANT HUMAN RIGHTS 

MAY 23, 2011 

COMMISSIONERS 

Page 

Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe .............................................. 1 

Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe .......................................... 4 

Hon. Joseph R. Pitts, Commissioner, Commission on Security 

and Cooperation in Europe ..................................................... 5 

Hon. Steve Cohen, Commissioner, Commission on Security 

and Cooperation in Europe ..................................................... 6 

WITNESSES 

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Director, Office to Monitor and 

Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State .. 7 

Gabriela D. Lemus, Labor Representative to the Senior Policy Operating Group on Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of Labor ................................................................... 10 

Nancy A. Donaldson, Director, Washington Office of the 

International Labor Organization [ILO] ................................ 23 

Neha Misra, Senior Specialist, Migration and Human Trafficking, Solidarity Center ........................................................ 26 

Julia Ormond, Founder and President, the Alliance to Stop 

Slavery and End Trafficking .................................................. 29 

APPENDICES 

Prepared statement of Hon. Christopher H. Smith ................. 42 

Prepared statement of Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin .................... 44 

Prepared statement of Ambassador Luis CdeBaca .................. 45 

Prepared statement of Gabriela D. Lemus ............................... 48 

Prepared statement of Nancy A. Donaldson ............................. 52 

Prepared statement of Neha Misra ........................................... 56 

Prepared statement of Julia Ormond ........................................ 62 

[III] 

(1) 

LABOR TRAFFICKING IN TROUBLED 

ECONOMIC TIMES: PROTECTING AMERICAN 

JOBS AND MIGRANT HUMAN RIGHTS 

May 23, 2011 

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

WASHINGTON, DC 

The hearing was held at 2 p.m. in 2172 Rayburn House Office 

Building, Washington, DC, Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, presiding. 

Commissioners present: Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; Hon. Joseph R. Pitts, Commissioner, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; and Hon. Steve 

Cohen, Commissioner, Commission on Security and Cooperation in 

Europe. 

Witnesses present: Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Director, Office to 

Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of 

State; Gabriela D. Lemus, Labor Representative to the Senior Policy Operating Group on Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of 

Labor; Nancy A. Donaldson, Director, Washington Office of the 

International Labor Organization [ILO]; Neha Misra, Senior Specialist, Migration and Human Trafficking, Solidarity Center; and 

Julia Ormond, Founder and President, the Alliance to Stop Slavery 

and End Trafficking. 

HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON 

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

Mr. SMITH. The Commission will come to order. And I want to 

welcome all of you to today’s hearing, part of the Helsinki Commission’s ongoing efforts to combat human trafficking in all of its aspects, which go back to June 1999 when I Chaired the first Commission hearing on human trafficking—really a tradition that continued under my good friend and colleague, Commissioner Cardin, 

when he was Chairman and now Co-Chair. This has been a bipartisan effort from the beginning, and it continues to this day. 

Today our attention turns to labor trafficking, a modern-day form 

of slavery, exacerbated by the global economic downturn. As with 

all forms of trafficking, we must never lose sight of the victim, the 

truly human face of people caught up unwittingly in this multibillion dollar criminal enterprise. Having just participated in a conference entitled, ‘‘Building Bridges of Freedom: Public-Private Part-
2 

nerships to End Modern-Day Slavery,’’ I am acutely aware that in 

order to be successful in combating the scourge of human trafficking, we must strengthen the cooperation between governments 

and the private sector, particularly with regards to labor trafficking. 

Each year, tens of thousands of victims are trafficked into the 

United States from throughout the world. The United States has 

been at the forefront of efforts to combat human trafficking in all 

of its forms, including labor trafficking, following adoption of the 

Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. 

Our government has undertaken the vast challenge of tracking 

slavery around the world. We have developed strategic reporting 

tools such as the Trafficking in Persons Report, the list of goods 

produced with child and forced labor, and the findings on the worst 

forms of child labor. And the world has taken notice. 

I would note parenthetically, when I first introduced the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 1998, a landmark bill that was 

signed into law 2 years later in 2000, the legislation was met with 

a wall of skepticism and outright opposition. People both inside and 

outside of government thought the bold new strategy that included 

sheltering, asylum and other protections for the victims, long jail 

sentences and asset confiscation for the traffickers and tough sanctions for governments that failed to meet minimum standards was 

merely a solution in search of a problem. 

I vividly recall raising the trafficking issue at a gathering of parliamentarians meeting in St. Petersburg in Russia in 1999 and was 

met with a similar reaction. As a matter of fact, the Russians—several on their delegation thought that somehow we were seeking to 

embarrass them. And I remember the Ukrainian representative 

very dismissively—and I remember—Ben, you would remember 

that—said, but they’re just prostitutes, as if somehow they were 

less than human. It was really a very disturbing spectacle. 

But the next year at the Bucharest OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, not only did we have virtually every one of the delegations 

joining in on the parliamentary supplementary item, as we called 

it, but the Russians spoke out, and the head of the Duma actually 

gave a speech in favor of the parliamentary supplemental item 

combating human trafficking. 

As the special rep for human trafficking in the parliamentary assembly for the OSCE, I know full well considerable progress has 

been made. I remain deeply concerned that of the 56 OSCE participating States, 20 will rank as Tier 2, with another 8 placed on the 

Tier 2 Watch List. 

Our efforts could not have been possible both within the OSCE 

as well as here in the United States without the invaluable contribution of civil society, who have helped us write the laws and, 

frankly, all subsequent iterations of the TPVA and other similar 

bills around the world. 

Last week, we heard Deb Cundy of the Carlson Companies, 

which manage numerous hotel chains including the Radisson and 

Country Inns and Suites, explain how their employees were trained 

to spot potential trafficking victims and how that employee should 

notify law enforcement. Christopher Davis of The Body Shop International detailed the extraordinary education and awareness pro-
3 

gram that they have initiated, coupled with a petition drive that 

has garnered approximately 6 million signatures worldwide. 

As we reauthorize certain sections of the act—obviously some of 

the act, some provisions, are permanent law; others need to be reauthorized, and they expire in the end of September—civil society 

representatives have flooded my office and, I’m sure, Ambassador 

Luis CdeBaca’s office, who was in Rome at that conference and did 

a magnificent job, with some thoughts as to what they think ought 

to be done to improve and make more efficacious our policy vis-avis trafficking. 

As we all know, traffickers prey upon those in poverty and those 

lacking even the prospect of a job. I have visited trafficking victims’ 

shelters in countries throughout the world, including Russia, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, D.R. Congo, Ethiopia, Brazil, Bosnia, Italy, and 

elsewhere. I’ve seen the faces—as have so many of you who will 

testify and so many in the audience, and certainly Members of our 

Commission—seen those faces of the victims—women and children 

and men—robbed of their inherent dignity. 

In Moldova, Catholic Relief Services documented that high school 

aged girls were disappearing, literally disappearing into human 

trafficking in large part due to the extreme lack of job opportunities in that country. CRS created the Moldova Employment and 

Training Alliance, which encourage private sector companies to expand in rural villages. And certainly, that has made a huge difference in that country. 

As a destination country, we must recognize that here in our 

very own backyard, thousands of people are trafficked from all over 

the world to work on our farms, in our hotels, our restaurants and 

even to serve as domestic workers. Well, even more shocking is 

that many of these labor migrants enter the country legally 

through their own immigration system, deceived by their traffickers who sold them a dream. 

Indeed, this afternoon we will focus on various aspects of labor 

trafficking, including abusive and illegal business practices, as well 

as ways to better educate potential migrants of their rights. Among 

other issues to be considered will be increased education and accountability, foreign labor recruiting practices and enhancing supply chain transparency. Labor trafficking remains the most prevalent form of human trafficking in the United States. 

U.S. funding for anti-trafficking efforts abroad have brought together labor inspectors, police, prosecutors, NGOs and faith-based 

organizations. Obviously, many challenges remain. So it falls to us 

and likeminded people of goodwill everywhere to meet those challenges head-on and wage an unceasing campaign to eradicate 

human trafficking from the face of the Earth. 

Today we are joined by Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Director of 

the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in 

Persons. He is joined by Dr. Gabriela Lemus, the Department of 

Labor’s labor representative to the Senior Policy Operating Group 

on Trafficking in Persons. 

On our second panel, we will hear from the Director of the Washington Office of the International Labor Organization, Ms. Nancy 

A. Donaldson; Ms. Neha Misra, specialist on migration and human 

trafficking for the Solidarity Center; and we have a very special 
4 

guest in actress and activist Julia Ormond, founder of the Alliance 

to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking—a very talented actress and 

a tireless humanitarian activist who was absolutely instrumental 

in getting landmark legislation passed in California to combat 

labor trafficking and to figure out the supply systems of companies 

through better transparency and by working with those companies. 

So we will hear from that second panel after we hear from our very 

distinguished first panel. 

I’d like to yield to a good friend and colleague, Mr. Cardin, CoChairman of this Commission. 

HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, CO-CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON 

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

Mr. CARDIN. Well, to Chairman Smith, thank you very much for 

arranging this hearing. I think it’s an extremely important subject. 

I would ask that my written opening statement be made part of the 

record. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection. 

Mr. CARDIN. And I will just comment briefly. It’s with great pride 

that the Helsinki Commission takes on dealing with the issue of 

trafficking, because it was this Commission that first raised these 

issues. And in the course of that, we conducted hearings; we sponsored resolutions at the parliamentary assemblies in order to get 

more international focus on modern-day slavery. We took a pretty 

tough stand. And Chairman Smith is right. Some of the initial reactions were less than sympathetic. 

But we persisted. And with the support of our delegation to Vienna, the United States had a united position to do everything we 

could to rid our societies of trafficking, the form of modern-day 

slavery. Then the permanent council started to act, and we started 

to get some best practices shared by other states. With the legislature and executive working in tandem, we were able to make significant progress. 

I remember visiting some of the shelters, where we visited with 

the victims and were able to put a spotlight on the issue that those 

that are trafficked are not criminals but they’re victims. And law 

enforcement needs to conduct its affairs mindful of who the real 

criminals are. And we made more progress and were able to get 

Special Representatives, both in the Parliamentary Assembly—and, 

as you know, our Chairman, Chairman Smith, is that Special Representative—and in the Permanent Council of the OSCE. 

So we’ve made progress. We have a game plan today to deal with 

trafficking. And the United States has shown tremendous leadership in the passage of not only our domestic laws, which are very 

strong, but also the reports that are now required to be filed. These 

reports, I can tell you, have a major impact—as I’m sure Chairman 

Smith would agree. When Ambassadors visit our office, that’s one 

of the first issues they’ll talk to us about, because they don’t want 

to be listed as a watch state. 

Our primary focus has been on sexual exploitation. And I think 

that reason is somewhat self-obvious. It’s a very serious situation 

around the globe, and we were able to make significant progress. 

Labor exploitation’s a little bit more complicated, because there’s 

an economic issue here that has some legitimacy—at least people 
5 

think there’s some legitimacy because of open borders and bringing 

in labor to help in your country. 

I want to applaud Chairman Smith for holding this hearing so 

that we can take a look at trafficking related to labor issues, particularly in these very difficult economic times. 

I want to point out that debt bondage for migration costs can 

amount to involuntary servitude or slavery. And we need to take 

a look at how these matters are being financed, because they are 

being used to deny people their basic human rights. I want to congratulate the Obama administration for taking this issue of labor 

seriously and the way that the Obama administration has coordinated the work within the Department of State and the Department of Commerce. That’s what you need to do. This is a matter 

that involves both of those agencies. And I know they’re working 

closely together. 

This is a very timely hearing. For Congress, shortly will be looking at the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. 

And in that act, I note that in 2008, in a matter that I helped 

draft, we put into that law additional tools for our consulate officers to be able to look at those who are requesting visas to come 

into the United States. I’ll be interested in hearing from our witnesses today whether those efforts are paying off. There’s training 

requirements that consular officers be able to identify circumstances that look like they’re trafficking. How has that in fact 

worked? Do we need to expand that training to other border officers and law enforcement officers? These are issues that I think we 

need to take a look at as we move forward to the reauthorization 

practices. 

Our bottom line is, we want to see what other countries are 

doing. We can learn from best practices of other countries in dealing with these issues. And I think we need to share the success stories so that we can, in fact, at long last get rid of these labor 

abuses. Working together, we can continue to make progress that 

we’ve made in the past so that we can eliminate all forms of modern-day slavery. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Chairman Cardin. I’d like to yield to the 

Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Health Committee, a Commissioner on our Helsinki Commission for many years, Joe Pitts. 

HON. JOSEPH R. PITTS, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON 

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And as an original cosponsor of the Trafficking in Persons Law and with you in the 

OSCE, putting forth these issues, I thank you for scheduling this 

hearing entitled ‘‘Labor Trafficking in Troubled Economic Times: 

Protecting American Jobs and Migrant Human Rights.’’ The issues 

involved in the exploitation of migrant workers, broad and on 

American soil, are of grave concern to the OSCE. In the wake of 

a global recession, it is important that we continue our focus on 

human trafficking and migrant worker populations now more than 

ever. 

While the United States has taken a lead on confronting and 

combating human trafficking, we must do everything we can to end 

the practice. And this includes looking at ways to verify worker 
6 

practices and conditions. We must find better ways at enforcing our 

own policies. Recent high-profile cases of violations have highlighted the need for a systemic verification process, one that is multilateral, including the help of foreign governments and organizations, and one that verifies from the bottom up, leaving no room 

for abuse throughout the supply chain. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this important hearing. I look forward to hearing the ideas from our witnesses here 

today and hope that we can find concrete solutions to dealing with 

the problem of labor exploitation here in the United States. And I 

yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Commissioner Pitts, thank you very much. I’d like to 

now yield to a new Member but very active Member, Steve Cohen. 

HON. STEVE COHEN, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON 

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s a pleasure to be here, 

and I’m going to look forward to listening to the testimony. Ambassador CdeBaca was a counsel to the Judiciary Committee, which I 

serve on, and has quite an honorable and distinguished record. 

Good to see you again in your position. And Ms. Lemus has been 

at some of the greatest universities in this country, including the 

University of Memphis. So it’s good to have a Memphis denizen, 

even if a short tenure with us today. 

This is an important issue. Slavery in any component is something we need to fight, and it needs to be something we do in a 

bipartisan fashion, because freedom is the bottom line. You know, 

there’s nothing left to lose. And we had a history in our country 

of slavery. And sometimes we think of slavery simply as that form 

of the most heinous, direct, main line of slavery. But there are 

other forms. There are temporary forms. There are forms that we 

have, and we need to combat them and make employers just as liable for looking the other way, maybe not knowingly, but looking the 

other way when they’re beneficiaries of slave labor. And we know 

that happens in this country and that whether they are landlords 

who have leased to people who are involved in labor trafficking, 

whether they are along the chain—I know we have products, and 

the California law goes along the chain to make people be aware 

that they will not be involved, and any producer of raw materials 

in the final product if they’re involved in the slave trade, that they 

won’t be allowed. I guess there’ll be sanctions in the California law. 

I’d hope so. And that’s what there should be. We have that for 

product. I know if you buy a guitar and it’s got any kind of a wood 

product in it that’s on the endangered list, you get in trouble for 

the final product. We should have the same thing. If wood is important, which it is in Brazil and the rainforests and all, it should be 

with human beings even more so. 

I’m Jewish. And Passover, which is my favorite holiday, not just 

because of the food but because of the lesson that we were in bondage and that we should always be cognizant of any people who 

were in bondage. And that’s just not building pyramids or doing 

cotton. But that’s the folks we’re going to talk about here today. 

And the Judeo-Christian ethos which we are all a product of needs 
7 

to be adhered to, and we need to pass the most rigorous and strong 

laws that we can to protect everyone. 

So with that, I thank the Chairman for scheduling this Commission meeting. I look forward to your testimony. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Cohen, thank you very much. And quoting Janis 

Joplin there? 

Let me just introduce our very distinguished panelists beginning 

with Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large of the Office 

to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. In May 2009, he 

was appointed by President Obama to coordinate U.S. Government 

activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery. 

He serves as Senior Adviser to the Secretary, and directs the State 

Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 

which, as we all know, assesses global trends, provides training 

and technical assistance and advocates for an end to slavery. Ambassador CdeBaca formally served as Counsel, as Commissioner 

Cohen just said, to the House Committee on the Judiciary. And at 

the Justice Department, he is one of our country’s most decorated 

Federal prosecutors, leading the investigation and prosecution of 

cases involving money laundering, organized crime, alien smuggling, official misconduct, hate crimes, and of course human trafficking. He was responsible for the conviction of dozens of abusive 

pimps and employers, and helped to liberate hundreds of victims 

from servitude. 

Then we’ll hear from Dr. Gabriela Lemus, who was appointed 

Senior Advisor and Director of the Office of Public Engagement at 

the Department of Labor in July 2009. She represents the DOL at 

the Senior Policy Operating Group in Trafficking in Persons, the 

President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status, and various interagency working groups on immigration policy. Prior to her appointment, she was the first woman to hold the position of Executive Director at the Labor Counsel for Latin America’s advancement, from 

2007 to 2009, as well as the first woman to chair the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda from 2008 to 2009. She served 3-year 

terms on the advisory boards of both the Washington Office on 

Latin America, or WOLA, and the U.S. Labor Education in the 

Americas Project from 2006 to 2009. 

Mr. Ambassador, please proceed as you would like. 

AMBASSADOR LUIS CdeBACA, DIRECTOR, OFFICE TO MONITOR AND COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Amb. CDEBACA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to shed light on the 

problem of labor trafficking both here, in the United States, and 

abroad. As you have mentioned, the OSCE and the Helsinki Commission in particular has led on this issue, as on many others. 

In Rome last week at the conference that was dealing with some 

of these issues, especially issues of supply chain, the words of one 

of our panelists from Rabbis for Human Rights North America reminded me and suggested what you have said, Mr. Cohen, which 

is that we are in some ways in the 10th year of this fight since the 

passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. But as the West-
8 

ern world, as people of faith and as those who reflect the JudeoChristian values, that we are in year 3,500 of this fight, and we 

should be measured on it in that sense. 

And unfortunately, 3,500 years later, estimates on the total number of trafficking victims in the world are as high as 27 million. We 

know that the United States is a major destination, but we don’t 

know how many victims of labor trafficking there are specifically 

in this country, because it’s a hidden crime. Victims are often 

afraid to come forward, or unable, sometimes because they fear the 

very officers that could help them. 

But the cases that have been uncovered tell us some things. We 

know that labor trafficking is a problem that affects men, women 

and children alike. Labor trafficking victims often suffer ongoing 

sexual abuse, as well as threats of physical violence, and that the 

cases now are uncomfortably identical to cases that the United 

States prosecuted in sharecropping in the 1930s, the railroad gangs 

of the turn of the century, or the padroni child begging cases of the 

1870s. 

Labor trafficking victims today are lured with the same types of 

promises—a good job and a better life—only to be trapped through 

their specific vulnerabilities. For foreign workers, that’s often lack 

of documents, language or familiarity with their rights here in 

America. For U.S. citizens, it’s often homelessness, mental illness 

or addiction. Whatever the hook that the traffickers use, we must 

bring this cycle to an end once and for all. 

As you know, the United States follows an expansive definition 

of human trafficking that encompasses all of the actions in reducing a person or holding them in a condition of servitude, and so 

that means that the recruiter who feeds the victim into the system, 

and the end user who knowingly or recklessly profits from the 

abuse, are properly as guilty as the employer who enslaves the victim. Our response is based on the internationally recognized ‘‘3P’’ 

paradigm: prosecution, protection, and prevention. All of these victims are entitled to rehabilitation, and to see their abusers brought 

to justice. 

We have seen progress over the last decade. And across government, we are ever more united in this struggle. More cases are 

being done both federally and at the state level than ever before. 

And while victim identifications at time stress and strain our victim services response, NGOs and frontline law enforcement work 

to ensure a safety net when these people are found. 

In particular, I’d like to praise my colleagues at the Department 

of Labor for their work both at home and abroad. In the United 

States for instance, they’ve implemented a rule that strengthens 

protections for a particularly vulnerable group, the temporary H– 

2A agricultural visa holders. My colleague Dr. Lemus will be able 

to highlight this and other actions that Secretary Solis has taken 

to confront this scourge. 

But to ensure that these efforts do not fizzle out as they have at 

other points throughout the last 150 years here in America, we 

need to institutionalize our capacity, maintain our resources and 

ensure innovation across the whole of government. And while every 

aspect can and must be addressed, I’d like to highlight one of the 

most innovative things that’s happening, and that is prevention. 
9 

It’s basic economics that without demand, there will be no supply. So we’re looking to engage on this aspect in both forced labor 

and sex trafficking alike. The so-called sex industry is not a valid 

form of labor, and it poses its own unique challenges. But there are 

commonalities in these areas, most notably the need to hold everyone accountable and to make the cultural change necessary that 

undercuts the demand for what the traffickers are using cruelty to 

supply. 

Forced labor is prevalent in the production of a wide range of 

raw materials that we all come in contact, and probably came into 

contact at some point today, from cotton, chocolate, coffee, steel, 

rubber, tin. Even reputable corporate citizens can profit from the 

abuse. 

So, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, the cutting edge of antitrafficking work is demanding that companies focus their attentions beyond the places where their products are manufactured 

and, instead, look at the source of their human capital, the methods of recruitment, where the raw materials are collected, harvested, or mined. Effective supply chain monitoring means going 

all the way down to that level. We think that such research will 

enhance our understanding of supply and demand factors that affect those workers whose labor contributes to the downstream profits. The aim is to find trafficking where it occurs, and that this 

knowledge will allow companies to join the Body Shop and Carlson 

Companies and others in running their business in a manner consistent with the ‘‘3P’’ paradigm. 

Removing the taint of slavery is better for everyone. Take for instance what’s been reported from the berry patches of Sweden and 

Finland: Asian guest workers so abused that they were reduced to 

surviving on a soup made of whatever grasses they could gather 

and whatever crows they could shoot. If a consumer knew the suffering of the hands that had picked those berries, we would hope 

that they would have been moved to act. 

A conference last winter produced the Luxor Implementation 

Guidelines to the U.N.’s Athens Ethical principles, which seek to 

move beyond aspirational statements to the development of standard operating procedures, moving beyond principles to practice and 

implementation. And to date, nearly 600 companies have adopted 

those guidelines. That represents the future of the fight against 

modern slavery. 

But of course, government’s role will remain central. Our counterparts in Europe have increasingly recognized this problem which 

all too often has been confused as low-level labor abuses of migrant 

workers. Today, with the leadership of the OSCE and the E.U. 

anti-trafficking directive, cases are on the rise. Countries with active rapporteurs, such as Eva Biaudet, who used to be at the 

OSCE’s anti-trafficking unit, are seeing increases in trafficking 

prosecutions. As in the United States, Europe has seen cases in 

factories, hotels, janitorial, agriculture, forestry, landscaping and 

domestic service. 

Here in the United States, the State of California recently enacted the law that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman. And we’re looking forward not only to see how that law works in the real world, 

but also to hear from Julia Ormond who, without this—her activi-
10 

ties, the legislation would never have been possible. We thank her 

for her vision and for her hard work in getting that law passed. 

And we’re trying to, and we’re beginning to apply those standards to ourselves. Governments are some of the largest consumers 

in the world, and the U.S. Government may be one of the largest. 

We can use our leverage as consumers to curb the demand for 

forced labor. We’ve taken steps in the U.S. Government procurement and contracting policies to protect against human trafficking. 

EEOC and the Department of Homeland Security, through this 

bog, are co-chairing a working group on implementation of the Federal Acquisition Regulation to combat modern slavery and contributing factors like the demand for commercial sex. And we will 

make sure that we work closely with this committee and with each 

of you individually as we start getting the recommendations back 

on how to best address the government’s purchasing to make sure 

that we have, as we ask of others, a slavery-free footprint. 

We’re at a moment in the modern abolitionist movement when 

we need to ask, what are the next steps? And over the last decade, 

the important tools have been put in place. We have before us now 

the long, hard road of implementation and institutionalization. And 

we believe that with the engagement of dedicated lawmakers and 

the commitment of the U.S. Government, the next 10 years, both 

here at the OSCE and abroad, will be a decade of delivering on 

that which we promised almost 150 years ago with the issuance of 

the Emancipation Proclamation. I look forward to working with you 

as we continue to deliver on that promise, and we appreciate your 

work. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for your testimony and your leadership. 

I’d like to now recognize Ms. Lemus. 

GABRIELA D. LEMUS, LABOR REPRESENTATIVE TO THE SENIOR POLICY OPERATING GROUP ON TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 

Ms. LEMUS. Thank you. Chairman Smith, Co-Chairman Cardin, 

and distinguished Members of the Commission, on behalf of the 

Department of Labor and Secretary Solis, I thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Department’s efforts to combat human 

trafficking both domestically and internationally. 

Under the Secretary’s leadership, the Wage and Hour Division, 

the Bureau of International Labor Affairs and the Employment and 

Training Administration work collaboratively to ensure that the 

Department uses all available tools in the most efficient and effective manner to protect these vulnerable populations. I am pleased 

to report to the Commission our efforts. 

The Wage and Hour Division enforces some of the Nation’s most 

comprehensive Federal labor laws, allowing the agency to have a 

daily presence in American workplaces. While Wage and Hour does 

not have responsibility to investigate trafficking directly, many of 

its investigations take place in industry marked by workers who 

are vulnerable to trafficking. This means that Wage and Hour Division is often the first Federal agency to make contact with the 

workers who may have been trafficked or maybe otherwise employed under abusive conditions in violation of the law. 
11 

Because of its focus on civil enforcement, criminal activity found 

in the workplace by Wage and Hour investigators may be referred 

to an appropriate authority as part of the standard Wage and Hour 

procedure. After a referral is made, the agency’s assistance may be 

requested to compute back wages to ensure restitution on behalf of 

victims of trafficking, and to assess penalties against their employers. Additionally, in its role of investigating workplace laws, the 

Department of Labor may detect evidence that a worker is a victim 

of certain criminal activity, including trafficking, that may qualify 

the worker for U nonimmigrant status. 

In April 2011, the Department announced protocols to complete 

a certification that the individual petitioning for U nonimmigrant 

status is a victim of a qualifying crime and is, has been or is likely 

to be helpful in the investigation or prosecution of that crime. The 

Wage and Hour Division is also a member of the Federal Enforcement Working Group, along with the Justice Department, the FBI, 

and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As part of the working group, Wage and Hour is participating in the development and 

implementation of the—a pilot Federal anti-trafficking coordination 

team, the ACT team program. The goal of the ACT team program 

is, one, to proactively identify and assist human trafficking victims; 

two, to develop victim-centered multidisciplinary human-trafficking 

investigations; and three, produce high-impact human-trafficking 

prosecutions resulting in the conviction of traffickers. 

Finally, Wage and Hour also participates in several other outreach and partnership activities to share information and leverage 

community-based resources to more effectively inform workers 

about their rights and how they can file Wage and Hour complaints. Such information can assist vulnerable workers, including 

those who may have been trafficked. 

Through the Department of International Labor Affairs, it also 

plays a critical role in bringing to light the dark stories of human 

trafficking. In December 2010, the Department released three new 

reports on child labor and forced labor. Together, these reports 

demonstrate that from factories to farms, abuses of fundamental 

human rights, including human trafficking, still persist in the 21st 

century. These reports are, one, the list of goods produced by child 

or forced labor; two, the list of products produced by forced or indentured child labor; and three, the ninth annual findings on the 

worst forms of child labor. 

Since 1995, Congress has appropriated over $839 million to ILAB 

for programs to combat international child labor. This funding has 

supported technical assistance projects in more than 80 countries 

and reached approximately 1.5 million children at risk of, or engaged in, exploitative child labor. While the Department’s technical 

assistance programs include stand-alone trafficking in persons 

projects, many also include multi-faceted projects to address other 

worst forms of child labor in addition to trafficking, because many 

of the most vulnerable workers in the United States are temporary 

foreign ag workers—agricultural workers, excuse me. 

ETA’s H–2A program is another significant locus in the Department’s efforts to combat trafficking. It is paramount that both 

workers in the United States and temporary foreign workers are 

provided with appropriate and adequate worker protections. In 
12 

March 2010, a final ruling addressing the temporary agricultural 

employment of H–2A aliens in the United States became effective. 

The final rule includes enhanced mechanisms for protecting H–2A 

workers, who are increasingly susceptible to the abuses of dishonest employers and their agents, such as foreign labor recruiters. 

The 2010 final rule requires employers to contractually forbid foreign labor contractors or recruiters engaged in international recruitment of H–2A workers from seeking or receiving payments 

from such prospective employees. The 2010 H–2A final rule enhanced enforcement provisions allow the department to investigate 

and sanction employers and their agents or attorneys where there 

is a violation of regulation provisions. These penalties demonstrate 

the department’s commitment to strengthening the necessary enforcement of a law that protects workers who are unlikely to complain to government agencies about violations of their rights under 

the program. 

In conclusion, in today’s global economy, workers in any country 

are vulnerable to trafficking and labor rights abuses. The department’s innovative and integrative programs help workers earn decent incomes, and prevent them from being abused and exploited. 

This approach is a vital part of the administration’s goal of ensuring that globalization provides benefits and opportunities for workers everywhere, rather than triggering a race to the bottom. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I’m happy 

to answer any questions the Commission may have on the Department of Labor’s efforts to combat trafficking. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Ms. Lemus. 

Let me just begin the questioning, if I could. Both you, Mr. Ambassador, and I both referenced the important work that has been 

done by Julia Ormond as founder of the Alliance to Stop Slavery 

and End Trafficking. And Senate Bill 657, which was signed into 

law, as you know, requires retail sellers and manufacturers doing 

business in California to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate 

slavery—I’m reading from an op-ed written by Ms. Ormond—and 

human trafficking from their direct supply chains. She points out 

that by January 2012, companies impacted by the bill will have to 

post on their Web sites what policies they have in place to ensure 

that their supply chains are free of slavery and human trafficking. 

And my question is, this is a model bill. Obviously there’s another 49 States and the District of Columbia that could follow suit, 

and obviously the Federal Government ought to be thinking along 

these lines as well. And I was wondering what your thoughts are 

about the new law’s strengths and weaknesses, whether or not— 

and I don’t think we should wait until January 2012 to see how 

well or poorly it’s working. I do think it looks to bring business 

along for the ride, and so I would be interested in your thought on 

this piece of legislation. 

Amb. CDEBACA. Thank you, Mr. Smith. We are very excited 

about the California law. We think that this is a very good way 

that one of the States—a State which, of course, if it were its own 

economy, certainly it would be part of the G–20, if not maybe even 

the G–8. A State like California taking these actions is going to 

have a ripple effect to countries and companies all the way around 

the world, because anyone who is a multinational company worthy 
13 

of the name is doing business in California. One of the things that 

we see from our perspective—and I think we all look forward to 

hearing from Ms. Ormond and others on the specifics of the law— 

but what we’ve seen in talking to California, a real hero against 

the fight against traffickers in the Attorney General’s office there, 

Kamala Harris, from her time when she was a State’s attorney in 

San Francisco, but also Jerry Brown, who’s gone from overseeing 

the training of law enforcement in California as the Attorney General, to go after trafficking in a new way over the last few years. 

His office has been very supportive of this. So one of the things 

that we think is going to happen is that all of us, as consumers, 

as the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking, academics, et cetera, will be able to access this information 

and start figuring out what the companies are doing. 

I think the brilliance of this is that in our understanding, it 

doesn’t necessarily say what particular policy company has to have; 

they just have to have something. And we think that that will then 

put it out to the marketplace of ideas. It’s an innovative way to 

have a regulatory structure that actually brings the market to 

bear, so all of us as consumers can look at these companies and 

make decisions, and put pressure on them accordingly. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that, thank you. Let me just ask: A common theme in trafficking for labor exploitation is holding the victim 

in debt bondage through recruitment and migration fees. Although 

the practice is illegal, and some countries have prohibited it under 

international conventions, how can we do a better job in enforcing 

that part of this chain of degradation? If you could—— 

Amb. CDEBACA. One of the things Congress did on its, I think, 

first day back after the end of the Civil War was pass a law that 

was called the ‘‘peonage’’ law—because of the term for debt bondage in Spanish—that made it clear that the protections of the thirteenth amendment didn’t just apply to the newly freed AfricanAmerican slaves in the South, but applied to people all over the 

country. So this notion of debt bondage as being one of our core 

anti-slavery ideals in the United States is key to our efforts. 

One of the things that we’ve seen is that with the passage of the 

2008 reauthorization of fraud in foreign labor contracting, we’ve 

seen our first convictions of that now in a case out of Kansas City 

where people were being brought over for janitorial services. We 

think that that’s going to be a powerful tool because sometimes you 

can show that there was a debt, but you can’t show that the debt 

was then specifically used as a threat. So we think that that fraud 

in foreign labor contracting provision of Title 18 that was in the 

TVPRA is going to help an awful lot. 

Two other areas, though, that we think that we need to look at: 

We’re working with countries around the world to try to—as the 

Department of Labor’s final rule on the guest worker programs 

here in the United States does—to try to strip the power of the 

labor recruiters to basically sell the chance to work in another 

country in exchange for the person’s freedom. We see that as something that only when we are able to bridge the power differential 

between the source countries—your Bangladeshes, Philippines, Malaysia, et cetera, and the wealthy countries such as Saudi Arabia, 

Qatar, other countries in the Persian Gulf—only when we are able 
14 

to narrow that power differential will we be able to end this practice of debt bondage. 

So for the first time just about a month-and-a-half ago, we were 

able to attend the Colombo Process, which is the sending and receiving countries—a multilateral forum. They asked the United 

States to attend because I think they’ve realized that even though 

we were not one of the countries involved, that we had a particular 

voice. And we’re going to use that as an avenue, as well as ASEAN 

and some of the other fora, to put that kind of pressure on the receiving countries. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Ms. Lemus, back on July 11th and July 

15, 1996, I held two hearings on child labor. Robert Reich testified; 

he made an impassioned appeal that we have to prioritize, we have 

to keep our focus. Then, we actually had Kathy Lee Gifford testify; 

she was embroiled in a problem of her line of clothing being made 

by sweatshops in Central America. 

But we actually heard from Wage and Hour—the Administrator 

at U.S. Department of Labor, Maria Echaveste, who had just produced and spoke about the report, ‘‘By the Sweat & Toil of Children,’’ and she made a very strong statement that without the participation of industry—and this was back in 1996—because we 

have too few Wage and Hour investigators, too few people at the 

State and Federal level, you just can’t enforce; you have to have 

buy-in fully by the industry—that our efforts would flounder without that. 

And I’m wondering—that was back in 1996—what is the industry doing now to be full-fledged partners in trying to combat labor 

trafficking? 

Ms. LEMUS. Well, at the Department of Labor, part of what we’ve 

also tried to do is to increase the number of inspectors and ensure 

that they’re not only bilingual, but that they have had training 

around the issue of human trafficking. As I said earlier, they are 

the first to come to the table and see, maybe witness where persons 

have been victims of trafficking. 

On our end, we do about 26,000 inspections a year, yet there are 

approximately 7 million employers. So obviously, it’s a challenge. 

And we do need assistance from the employers themselves to have 

buy-in that they wish to participate. And we would say probably 

a good majority of them are going to be good actors. 

Internationally, when we work with child labor issues in particular, what we’re noting is that those reports do have an effect— 

that countries—as you said at the beginning, the Ambassadors—as 

soon as their reports come out, the phone calls at our international 

labor affairs office, they start streaming in quite steadily. And it’s 

really an effort to partner with not only the countries but the businesses themselves to ensure that we are changing the bar, that 

we’re actually raising the bar in terms of that participation with 

the private sector. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Chairman Cardin. 

Mr. CARDIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And let me 

thank both of our witnesses. The 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, TIP report, for the first time included an analysis of the 

United States, which I think many of us thought was a major improvement on the TIP report. 
15 

Is it the Secretary’s intent that the United States will be included in future reports? 

Amb. CDEBACA. That’s correct. 

Mr. CARDIN. Good. I’m going to make sure that is done because 

I think it is helpful. But let me talk a little bit about your testimony—you were talking about the H–2A enforcement provisions— 

and I guess my question to you: How do you enforce this? You already pointed out that many of the laborers will be reluctant to 

come forward to talk about the circumstances out of fear. Could 

you just share with us how you intend to enforce the provisions you 

talked about in the H–2A program? 

Ms. LEMUS. Through the Wage and Hour Division in particular, 

we have engaged in a variety of local campaigns—or national campaign, I should say—but also State and local law enforcement and 

community-based types of task forces. The Wage and Hour Division 

belongs to about 25 taskforces across the country at the local level. 

We also participate in the [47:46] [Federal act team ?] program, 

which is looking right at this point—and my understanding is, 

they’re pilot programs—but they’re looking to really increase the 

level of cooperation across Federal law enforcement agencies to 

really improve—we look at the three P’s as prevention, protection, 

and prosecution; we kind of start on the prevention end of things 

because a lot of what we have to do is that educational piece. 

We’re also engaged—and this is not a new program, but it’s 

something that we’ve reinvigorated: We’ve re-engaged with a memo 

of understanding with the Government of Mexico, for example, 

whereby we have signed a memo of understanding to basically ensure that workers that come in from Mexico are aware of the—— 

Mr. CARDIN. But if I understand your H–2A restriction about the 

foreign employment agencies being prohibited from being compensated, is that what you said? Did I hear you correctly on that? 

Ms. LEMUS. The foreign labor contractors are not to receive any 

payment from an employee. And it’s up to the employer to pay all 

fees, et cetera, and contractually state that they—in the contract 

with their agents—that they may not charge them any fees. 

Mr. CARDIN. And again, how are you going to enforce that if you 

don’t have your own inspectors out, or some way of finding out 

what’s going on? It’s wonderful to have cooperation, but I don’t 

think you’re going to have cooperation from unscrupulous foreign 

employment agencies or the workers who are afraid of losing their 

jobs. 

Ms. LEMUS. That is correct. There’s an audit process through the 

employment training that actually certifies the visas. Prior to, they 

look at the procedures of the paperwork if for any reason there are 

any types of violations whatsoever. And there is a new audit process that began, I want to say, last year. So it’s relatively new, but 

it’s something that’s been added. So after the fact, they are continuously checking the information from the workers. 

The workers do come forward, not as often as we would like and 

not as well as we would like, so we’ve also increased our partnerships with local community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, et cetera, but also State and local law enforcement so 

that they can come forward as well. Sometimes, the workers do not 
16 

wish to speak on their own behalves, and they have to have these 

third parties intervene, including, for example, the consulates. 

Mr. CARDIN. Can either one of you follow up with us with how 

the 2008 provisions about training consulars on the issuance of 

visas, do we have any direct information on oversight as to how 

that has been enforced? 

Amb. CDEBACA. Certainly, Senator. One of the things that our 

consular officers now receive during ConGen, which is the basic 

consular officers’ course—the trafficking victims identification, the 

indicators, et cetera, are now taught during the basic course. So it’s 

not just kind of remedial training like it had been in the past. Additionally, an online training course is available for the consular officers out in the field for updates and for keeping current. 

But one of the things that we’ve seen that is probably the best 

training is the repetition of the training. You’re familiar with, in 

the TVPRA of ’08, the requirement that we work with the nongovernmental organizations to come up with a brochure that would 

be given to many of the work-based or employment-based visa, nonimmigrant categories. And that’s the ‘‘know your rights’’ brochure 

that is now given out. It’s actually reviewed by the consular officer 

with the immigrant during the interview on the visa line. 

I can’t say that it’s always 100 percent—it kind of depends on 

what’s happening at that exact moment. But one of the things that 

we’ve seen is, it’s got the 24-hour hotline on it, they have received 

upwards of a thousand calls since this went into place a couple 

years ago. Some of those calls are general wage-hour type of calls, 

people wanting to know about housing conditions, people wanting 

to know about a whole host of worker rights. But some of those 

calls are human trafficking calls. And it’s something that we work 

with the Human Trafficking Resource Center and with these task 

forces the Department of Justice and ICE and others run to make 

sure that they respond when there’s an allegation that’s coming 

forth. 

Mr. CARDIN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, let me just point out: I 

think it’s important that our staff really review the analysis of the 

United States in the TIP report. Let me just point out one nuance 

here that was in this report dealing with benefits. And as you 

know, immigrants, non-nationals, are entitled to very few benefits 

in this country. And if they are certified as being a foreign victim, 

then they are entitled to certain benefits. 

And even though there was a 250-percent increase in certifications for victims in the last year, there was no increase in funding for those programs. 

We already have a relatively—well, we already have a hostile attitude in this country on benefits for non-nationals. And we’re dealing here with an area where we have either potential victims or 

victims that it seems to me we need to conform to international 

standards as to how we deal with governmental services available 

to this class of individuals. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Commissioner Cohen. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ambassador, do we 

have—and it’s hard to quantify, but could you give me the three 

or four worst countries that are involved in the slave trade? 
17 

Amb. CDEBACA. Well, I think, Mr. Cohen, there’s a couple of 

ways to cut that particular orange. Whether it’s the raw numbers, 

I think that most interlocutors that look at it certainly in the report indicates that South Asia, that South Asian countries continue 

to have perhaps the largest numbers—India, Nepal, Bangladesh, et 

cetera. East Asia and the Pacific region continue to be of great concern as far as the numbers are concerned. 

But one of the things that we often are trying to balance as far 

as saying, what’s the worst country that there would be to be a 

trafficking victim—and probably our heart goes out to most of the 

folks in the AF region, the Africa region, because you’re talking 

about countries that have so few functioning governmental structures, rule of law that’s not really there. Even if there is an antitrafficking law, even if they are active in the AU up in Addis, 

which does an anti-trafficking day for the African child—against 

child trafficking—on June 16th each year, that doesn’t necessarily 

mean it translates out into the villages, out into the places where 

these kids are enslaved, whether it’s in the cocoa plantations, 

whether it’s the fishing fleet on Lake Volta or otherwise. 

So without necessarily going into a particular country in Africa, 

we think that Africa is deserving of a lot more of attention. We 

can’t take our eyes off the prize as far as the countries that are 

continually of concern in East Asia and South Asia. But we feel 

like the African children and the African men and women deserve 

to be free from slavery and involuntary servitude just as much as 

their partners. 

Mr. COHEN. What I was thinking of—and I feel like it’s going to 

be difficult. I was imagining that maybe Ukraine and some of the 

more Western countries might have had more of a involvement. 

But if the State Department has any sanctions against countries, 

and if that could happen—— 

Amb. CDEBACA. This is something that is one of the tools in our 

tool chest: Each year with the trafficking report, the ranking of the 

countries from Tier 1 down to Tier 3—following that Tier 3 designation can come sanctioning. And we’ve seen great movement, for 

instance, just in the last year from the Government of Moldova, 

which was very publicly concerned that sanctions might kick in 

and that sanctions, not just the sanctions from the TVPA—but perhaps even more importantly, the TVPA requires the United States 

to vote against a country that’s on Tier 3 in the IMF, World Bank, 

et cetera. 

And in the Millennium Challenge Corporation, we’ve seen a lot 

of movement on countries who are concerned about their MCC 

money. Because then you’re talking about some real money. So 

we’ve seen just in the last year the Government of Moldova, which 

doesn’t necessarily have it to spare, spend almost $900,000 on victim care. 

Ukraine is still a problem, but not necessarily with its back 

against the wall the way it was 10 years ago because of the number of projects both at the OSCE, the U.S. Government projects, 

AID, Justice Department, et cetera. But we’ve seen that notion of 

sanctions, and the threat of sanctions, as something that is moving 

these countries. 
18 

Mr. COHEN. As a judiciary graduate, are there laws that we 

should be looking at in judiciary you can recommend to us to 

strengthen what the body of law is in our country? 

Amb. CDEBACA. Well, one of the things that we look at each year 

in the minimum standards when we’re putting together the 

rankings of the TIP report is the sufficiency of the laws in these 

countries. At the end of the day, what we’ve been very adamant on 

is that they have a law that’s not based on old notions of people 

being moved across international borders—that’s kind of the 1880s’ 

version of human trafficking—but rather focusing upon the enslavement, focusing on the abuse of the people so they can see 

them not as an illegal migrant but as a victim of slavery. 

So through the ABA, through the International Organization for 

Migration, through U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime and bilaterally, 

just directly as the United States, we’ve been working with countries to try to get these modern anti-trafficking laws passed. About 

120 countries have done so since the passage of our Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which was one of the first ones and therefore 

the models. 

But what we’ve seen in some countries is, they can have the best 

law on the books, but if they don’t go out and use it then it’s a 

failed promise. So we’re having to come back in behind those laws, 

make sure that they mean something in the real world. 

Mr. COHEN. How about laws here in our country, about employers or landlords or tenants and/or employees that are involved either directly or secondarily in labor trafficking? 

Amb. CDEBACA. One of the most positive things about the 2008 

Trafficking Victims Protection reauthorization was moving from a 

full-on knowledge standard to a reckless-disregard standard for 

those who profit from human trafficking. And so what we’re hoping 

is both the government—but then there’s also civil liability under 

the trafficking act, which means that a good plaintiff’s lawyer out 

there might take this and run with it. 

But that notion of going after the hotel owner who knows that 

the pimps are bringing the underage girls or the women into the 

hotel and profiting from that, if they’re knowingly looking the other 

way, if there’s a farmer—you know, when I was at the Justice Department, I prosecuted a farm-labor contractor who was putting a 

work crew onto the same fields that one of my predecessors had 

prosecuted somebody 20 years before. And the farmer was the son 

of the man who had watched this other farm-labor contractor allow 

slavery. 

But at the time, we didn’t have this provision. So the hope is, 

now this provision with the reckless disregard, that’ll be a way to 

hold, whether it’s farmers, hotel owners, et cetera, accountable in 

a new way. 

Mr. COHEN. Is there confiscation of property involved with those 

laws? 

Amb. CDEBACA. There is, although to date, most of the asset forfeiture has been against the trafficker, the direct trafficker, rather 

than somebody who’s knowingly or recklessly profiting from the 

trafficking. But I think that that’s something that we’ve seen the 

Civil Rights Division act very aggressively on. It tends to focus 

one’s mind when the domestic servant—say, for instance, in a case 
19 

that was prosecuted out of Wisconsin—a domestic servant who has 

been held captive in a house for 19 years ends up owning that 

house because the government comes in and takes it away from the 

people who enslaved her. That gets a lot of attention, and it should. 

Mr. COHEN. Yes. I think it should, too. What do we have in the 

way of undercover operations? Do we have any of those? 

Amb. CDEBACA. One of the things that’s been tough about undercover operations is because we’re dealing with human beings, it’s 

kind of like doing the human experiment trials in a university setting: The level of controls that one needs to have as far as a controlled purchase, or something like that, becomes very challenging. 

But we have in the United States done a number of innovative 

and proactive law enforcement approaches that I’d certainly be 

happy to brief you on offline; perhaps we could have some of our 

colleagues from DOJ and ICE as well to talk about some of those 

things that are being done. 

Mr. COHEN. I was just thinking—now, you were in Judiciary 

when Stephen Colbert came, when he did the migrant worker 

day—maybe we could get Geraldo and let him do that. 

Amb. CDEBACA. [Laughter.] Well, it’s interesting because I think 

there has been some very effective undercover work. I think I saw 

in the audience today Ben Skinner, who in his book, ‘‘A Crime So 

Monstrous,’’ talks about how he basically set his stopwatch when 

he left his apartment one morning in New York, and within 6 

hours he had bought a Haitian child for slavery. And I think that 

that says a lot not only of what world we live in as far as involuntary servitude, but the kind of investigative reporting and the kind 

of undercover work that needs to be done if we’re ever going to 

break this. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Commissioner Cohen. Let me ask just two very brief 

questions to Ambassador CdeBaca: The J–1 visa program, as you 

know, brings in about 100,000 college students from around the 

world to work in the United States. Some work on the Jersey 

Shore, and they often do work in the summer resort industry. And 

there have been increasing numbers of reports of abuse by thirdparty brokers and unsupervised businesses. Associated Press did 

an expose on this, as you know. 

And my question is—and the national human trafficking hotline—let me just add this—has received, as I think you know, Mr. 

Ambassador, 369 calls from J–1 visa holders on the work and travel program from young people who are experiencing trafficking and 

other forms of exploitation from last summer alone. 

Strip clubs and adult entertainment companies openly solicit J– 

1 workers even though government regulations ban students from 

taking those jobs that might bring the Department of State into 

disrepute. And I’m wondering what could be done to stop the abuse 

of J–1 visas by labor recruiters and businesses, ensuring that students who come here have a safe and humane experience, and not 

one of exploitation. 

And second, on China—and I do hope when the designations of 

Tier 3 are listed that the Department and your office is very seriously considering the designation of Tier 3 for China both on the 

labor and sex trafficking area. 
20 

But I’m wondering what kind of data calls you’ve gotten from— 

and information from our Embassy and other sources about the exploitations of a Chinese work force. We know there’s no OSHA protections whatsoever; they have in excess of 125,000 deaths directly 

attributable to occupational hazards. There’s no labor unions. And 

those who argue for labor unions are summarily sent to the laogai 

and tortured. 

There is an MOU, as you know so well, that dates back to the 

George Bush—the first administration on prison labor, and it’s not 

worth the paper it’s printed on because it requires U.S. investigators to submit any complaint to the Chinese authorities, and then 

they investigate and report back to us. There’s no onsite inspections, no independent verification. And Chinese workers, as we 

know, get 10 to 50 cents per hour for work, and many are in sweatshop conditions dotted throughout all of China. 

So if ever there was unfair trading practice, I think it is—and 

the exploitation of labor fits that bill. Doesn’t that constitute labor 

trafficking? 

Amb. CDEBACA. Thank you, Mr. Smith. One of the things that 

of course, with the Summer Work and Travel Program—and this 

is something that when I have been in Eastern Europe, especially 

Ukraine and Russia, that we’ve been hearing about some of these 

concerns. 

At the end of the day, this is a program which I think, you know, 

millions of children, millions of students have been able to come in 

the United States over the last 50 years. We think that it’s been 

not just a success story of U.S. public diplomacy, but had a lot to 

do with getting people behind the Iron Curtain to be able to understand who America was, who Americans were. And we want to continue that with the countries especially in Eastern Europe. 

One of the things that the department has done, because we recognize that the young age and limited sophistication of some participants have contributed to a potential vulnerability for trafficking initiatives that are targeted at the participants—and so to 

minimize the risk, early this year we issued an interim final rule— 

it’s April 25th of 2011—in the Federal Register which makes some 

changes to the program, sharpens the program as far as a pilot 

program for the six countries: Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. And these are the six countries, frankly, 

that our law enforcement agencies and our Embassies and other 

had identified as those that should be of concern. 

The program and the pilot is requiring a 100-percent preplacement in jobs—no bringing folks over through the program, 

and then getting them jobs here; a full vetting of all the job offers; 

and enhanced monitoring. 

But one of the things that the interim final rule explicitly did, 

because we thought that it needs to be in there in no small part— 

so then if someone brings someone over and does this, they might 

not just be violating the terms of the program, but depending on 

what promises or contracts were given, could be reached through 

visa fraud, fraud in foreign labor contracting, or even the trafficking statutes—is that no Summer Work and Travel participant 

can be put in any position in the ‘‘adult industry,’’ and they can’t 

be put into domestic-servant positions in private homes. Both of 
21 

those are things that we certainly know make participants vulnerable to trafficking, and are basically a violation of the promise that 

the United States and the program is making to these parents 

overseas that their children, their students are coming to the 

United States to learn the best of us. 

So we’re committed to policing this program and to not tolerating 

any of these types of abuses within it. 

As far as China is concerned, one of the things that we’ve seen 

in the last months in China is in the wake of their joining the Palermo Protocol is a little bit more of analysis from the Chinese academics, as well as some parts of the Chinese Government, the 

IMOAT—I-M-O-A-T, which is the inter-ministerial anti-trafficking 

coordinating body—looking at what they need to do to come into 

compliance with the Palermo Protocol. They have a way to go. 

And we’ve talked to them about this; I’ve raised it when in Beijing. Especially, there’s been a problem of labor trafficking because 

up until recently—up till just this year—men were not included in 

the definition of trafficking, and unofficial workgroups were not. If 

you were part of a work unit, then you could be considered a trafficking victim if you were a woman. But a man who is working in 

the underground economy would not have been covered by the trafficking laws. 

So those cases that we’ve known about for the last 5 or 6 years— 

the horrible cases of the brick workers, the men in the blacksmith 

shops, the miners, et cetera, case after case after case coming to 

light—and having a lot of—even with the issues of being able to 

get the word out in China, cases that have gotten a lot of attention 

in China, those cases legally were not part of their definition of 

trafficking. So we’ve raised this with them, but we stand ready to 

continue to work with our Chinese counterparts on the law enforcement side especially as to what they need to do to address this. 

One thing that we are seeing as far as some modicum of worker 

protection is for internal migration. The Chinese Government has 

been working with the International Labor Organization and others, so we’re seeing a little bit more as far as materials, know-yourrights type of things, kind of like what we’ve talked about for workers going to other countries. But it’s the West-to-East pattern of internal migration in China, even to the point of having it—you 

know, deck of cards with all of the horrible things that could happen to you when you’re in Southeast China before anybody gets on 

a train. 

But we certainly share many of your concerns, and we’ve raised 

many of these when I’ve had a chance to deal with our Chinese 

counterparts. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, just a followup: How difficult will it be for a corporation to live up to the spirit and letter of S. bill 657, the Senate 

bill in California, when some of or many of its feeder parts are 

made or manufactured in China, where—as Harry Wu has documented over and over again, the great laogai survivor who is now 

a great champion of human rights here in the United States—since 

there’s no access? 

And very often, a colonel by day is also the CEO of that particular corporation, and has the full protection of the government 
22 

and the People’s Liberation Army so that it’s very hard to penetrate that corporate veil. How—— 

Amb. CDEBACA. We think that the California bill will have a big 

impact. We’ve seen companies in China respond when there have 

been other issues often, whether it’s lead in the paint or other adulterated materials. But this is something that—Mr. Cohen’s point 

earlier about the wood in the guitar—unfortunately, sometimes it’s 

easier to test that wood and see that it’s an endangered tree; it’s 

easier to test the animal product and see that it’s from an endangered species than it is sometimes to look at a factory and see 

whether or not somebody was enslaved there. 

So the level of inquiry that we hope that the California transparency act will enable us to proceed with—certainly, the hope is 

that we can put the freedom of a person at the same level as the 

pelt of some kind of exotic animal. 

Mr. SMITH. Do you anticipate that the administration might suggest its own language that would parallel the California bill? 

Amb. CDEBACA. I think that at this point, we definitely want to 

see how the California bill comes online. We want to be supportive 

of the effort. I think that we’d certainly want to work with you and 

others, if that was something that was under active consideration, 

whether for the re-authorization or otherwise. But at this point, 

we’re very much looking to see what we hope is going to be the success of the California bill before we get into the middle of it, as it 

were. 

Mr. SMITH. I will thank our two very distinguished witnesses for 

your testimony and for your leadership. And thank you so much. 

I’d now like to invite our second panel to the witness table, beginning with Nancy A. Donaldson, Director of the International 

Labor Organization at the Washington office. Before joining ILO, 

Ms. Donaldson was Vice President for Dutko Global Advisors, 

where she was an Advisor to the ILO Washington office from 1997 

to 2005. She was Vice President for Energy, Education, Technology, 

Trade, and International Issues at the Downey McGrath Group. 

Prior to that, she was in the Washington office, Director for Women’s Action for a New Direction, and a lawyer in private practice. 

We’ll then hear from Neha Misra, who is a Senior Specialist on 

Human Trafficking and Migrant Worker Programs for the Solidarity Center, an international worker-rights NGO based in Washington, DC, and part of the AFL–CIO. She has worked for many 

years in international policy, advising on migration and human 

trafficking issues. She serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Global Workers Justice Alliance, and as chair of the 

public interest committee for the North American South Asian Bar 

Association. 

In addition to her position as Senior Specialist at the Solidarity 

Center, Ms. Misra also serves as Senior Program Officer in the Africa regional office. Her expertise on global trafficking issues was 

initially developed in Indonesia, where she was the Deputy Country Director and Program Manager for the Solidarity Center’s 

Counter Trafficking Project. She worked in Indonesia for over 5 

years, starting with the Solidarity Center as the Director of its Democracy Project. 
23 

Before assignment in Indonesia, she worked in Bosnia on postwar elections and democracy, and in the United States as Senior 

Attorney Advisor with the U.S. Department of Justice. While at 

DOJ, she also served as the President of the American Federation 

of Government Employees. 

And finally, we’ll hear from Julia Ormond, who is an internationally admired and successful actress, and has played roles in numerous motion pictures and TV shows, including ‘‘Legends of the Fall,’’ 

‘‘Sabrina,’’ ‘‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’’ ‘‘First Knight,’’ 

and so many others. And she was awarded an Emmy in 2010. 

Julia Ormond has an inspirational record of advocacy on human 

rights issues, and has been strongly involved in the issue of human 

trafficking since becoming aware of it firsthand experience on the 

plight of trafficked women in Eastern Europe. 

She also served in a number of roles in international NGOs, most 

recently as President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking, or ASSET, an organization she founded in 2007. ASSET is 

an advocacy NGO dedicated to the systematic eradication of slavery 

chiefly through giving the victims of slavery a voice on their own. 

The group was the leading sponsor of the California Transparency 

in Supply Chains Act of 2010, which we discussed with the earlier 

panel, which tackles slavery and human trafficking by requiring 

companies to report on the sources of their supply chains. 

Previously in 1999, Ms. Ormond also co-founded FilmAid International, which aims to inform and empower refugee communities 

through film. In 2005, she was named as the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Against Slavery and Trafficking. She is no stranger to Capitol Hill, having previously testified in the House as well 

as before the California State legislature again on issues related to 

human trafficking. 

So please, if you would begin first with Ms. Donaldson, Ms. 

Misra, and then—batting cleanup will be Julia Ormond. 

NANCY A. DONALDSON, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON OFFICE OF 

THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION [ILO] 

Ms. DONALDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Commissioner 

Cohen, and the Members of the Commission, for inviting me to testify today. I am representing the International Labor Organization, 

which is a specialized agency of the United Nations. 

Each year, millions of people leave their homes and cross national borders in search of better prospects and greater security for 

themselves and their families. Ninety percent of all migrants are 

workers and their families. Migrants bring skills and initiative to 

advanced economies, to host countries. They also benefit origin 

countries, sending money home and transfer of technology and critical skills. 

Today, we are here to discuss urgent problems often faced by vulnerable migrant populations and individuals—criminal trafficking 

and forced labor—and the actions that the ILO and others are taking to eradicate these abuses. 

Migrants are vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination. In 

the extreme, irregular migration includes trafficking, smuggling, 

sexual exploitation and violence. As ILO’s recent report highlights, 
24 

forced labor today is the antithesis of decent work, and a global 

problem affecting almost every country in the world. 

Traditional slavery is still found in some parts of Africa, while 

forced labor or coercive recruitment is present in many countries 

of Latin America, parts of the Caribbean, and elsewhere. In Europe 

and North America, an increasing number of women and children 

are victims of traffickers who sell them into forced prostitution or 

sweatshops. 

The ILO estimates that there are at least 12.3 million persons 

in forced labor today. Eighty percent, or 9.8 million people, were 

exploited by private agents. Most victims are poverty-stricken people in Asia and Latin America of those figures. Yet, over 360,000 

women and men are in forced labor in industrialized countries— 

OSCE countries—trafficked for either labor or sexual exploitation. 

Some 56 percent of all persons in forced labor are women and girls, 

and children under 18 years of age make up about half, nearly half 

of forced laborers. 

The ILO has taken up the issue of protecting domestic workers 

vigorously. Last year, the ILO International Labor Conference 

began consideration of a domestic workers’ convention. It will be 

expected to take it up for the second final round in June of this 

year. We very much appreciate the strong support of the United 

States in working on the domestic worker protections, and also the 

OSCE. 

One principal responsibility of the ILO is drawing up and overseeing international labor standards. Strong enforcement of labor 

standards worldwide, levels the playing field for all workers, including American workers and industries. In today’s globalized 

economy, international labor standards are also an essential component for ensuring that the growth of the global economy provides 

benefits to all. 

The ILO has pioneered the development of international standards prohibiting forced labor and for the governance of labor migration and the protection of migrant workers since the 1930s. Two of 

the eight core conventions among core labor standards set out prohibitions on all forms of forced labor. There are also two conventions, 97 and 193, that govern migration for employment. Also, in 

1990, the U.N. International Convention on the Protection of 

Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families was 

established. 

The ILO has two specialized programs: the International Migration Program and the Special Action Program to Combat Forced 

Labor, which provides technical assistance to ILO countries and 

partners with the challenges of labor migration and forced labor. 

The ILO is promoting a global alliance with partner agencies, pooling their efforts to eliminate forced labor worldwide by 2015. The 

OSCE is a major partner in this endeavor, and we do a lot of 

things together. 

ILO’s International Migration Program supports ILO member 

states in combating discrimination against migrants and helping 

their social and economic integration. Currently, the program is engaged in 14 technical cooperation projects either funded by or implemented in OSCE countries, working to develop effective migration systems and policies and to strengthen government institu-
25 

tions and educate migrants on their rights and the services available. ILO has been at the forefront of generating and sharing data 

and knowledge on these subjects to raise public awareness and increase pressure for action. ILO’s initial body of research was seminal, as it provided the basic facts and figures on modern forced 

labor, raising the global pressure for policy change. 

I would like to emphasize that improving data collection on these 

issues is of paramount importance. Significant gaps in understanding the quantitative dimension of forced labor and human 

trafficking remain. I will say that the U.S. law has brought forward 

more data collection, which we think is extremely important. 

The ILO has developed and disseminated courses, guidances, 

training materials on key aspects of forced labor and trafficking. 

And cooperation between the OSCE and the ILO on research and 

training has helped our economic partners to access important 

knowledge and expertise. 

The ILO assists governments. We work hand in hand with our 

183 member governments in designing and implementing projects 

on the ground. Through our Decent Work Country Programmes 

strategies, the ILO works with employers, workers and governments to set out agreed national priorities in the world of work. 

Experience shows with—that with careful awareness raising, consensus can be built to include sensitive subjects such as forced 

labor among the core national priorities. 

In Brazil, the ILO has been working with our social partners on 

the issue of forced labor and global supply chains. The abolition of 

slave labor and the worst forms of child labor are a key priority for 

Brazil and their national agenda for decent work. With grant support from the State Department, ILO worked with companies and 

continues to work with the government, companies and civil society 

to promote new understanding and strategies for engagement. The 

key objective is to strengthen the global alliance against forced 

labor by reducing the risks of trafficking and forced labor facing 

Brazilian suppliers and international buyers. And we work with 

seven tiers of suppliers just in Brazil sometimes. 

I want to leave the Commission with three key points. One, good 

migration policies and the abolition of forced labor are challenges 

for every county, whether industrialized, emerging economies or 

less developed. We believe that true gains in the governance of migration and against forced labor must happen in a multilateral context. 

Two, the ILO takes a rights-based approach to these issues. In 

that, we are very harmonious with this Commission. We are devoted to promoting social justice and decent work in recognizing 

human and labor rights. 

Three, the governance of migration and forced labor deserves a 

multi-stakeholder approach. The ILO works with governments and 

its strong social partners to reduce irregular migration and end 

forced labor and ensure protection of workers’ rights. We have enjoyed fruitful partnerships with G/TIP, DRL, and ILAB represented 

here today, and we respect and seek more ways to work with the 

Solidarity Center. We are dedicated to continue working together 

with our social partners and advocates to improve migrants’ condi-
26 

tions and to end forced labor and human trafficking around the 

world. Thank you very much. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, and thank you for the good 

work of ILO over these many decades. 

I’d like to now ask Ms. Misra if she would proceed. 

NEHA MISRA, SENIOR SPECIALIST, MIGRATION AND HUMAN 

TRAFFICKING, SOLIDARITY CENTER 

Ms. MISRA. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Commissioner 

Cohen, for this opportunity to testify today. I’d like to ask that my 

full written testimony be submitted to the record so that I can be 

very brief with you—— 

Mr. SMITH. Sure. 

Ms. MISRA [continuing]. And we can get to some questions. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. 

Ms. MISRA. OK. The Solidarity Center is an International LaborRights Organization working in over 60 countries around the 

world, and really appreciates the U.S. Helsinki Commission focus 

in this hearing on trafficking for labor exploitation and the focus 

on abusive, unethical and illegal business practices that contribute 

to human trafficking and forced labor. We’ve seen firsthand how 

violations of worker rights and the lack of labor standards and protections for workers increase their vulnerability to human trafficking. But we still see in the media and when you talk to the public about human trafficking, many times you’ll hear people talk 

about it as the crime of organized syndicates, criminal gangs and 

underground criminals, which, of course, is the case in many instances. But we are also seeing increasingly around the world trafficking for labor exploitation happening in the context of legal 

structures of employment and business, with the traffickers being 

employers and labor recruiters, and not gang members or members 

of organized crime. 

And so, that’s what I want to focus on today in my testimony. 

While trafficking for labor exploitation has many facets, several 

major trends in our globalized world endanger workers, particularly those at most risk in the need and those in the most need of 

protection. In developed economies like the United States and Europe, we’re seeing an increase in the cases of trafficked immigrant 

teachers, nurses, construction and service-sector workers, all in 

destination countries with valid visas, shining a light on the structural failures within our economic and employment systems that 

increase immigrant workers’ vulnerability to severe forms of labor 

exploitation. Multinational corporations, employers, businesses, 

labor recruiters and others exploit these structural failures. 

Of particular concern to us—and Chairman Smith, you talked 

about this in the Senate, and in the earlier testimony we heard 

some about this—are temporary labor-migration schemes. Around 

the world we hear these referred to as guest-worker sponsorship or 

circular-migration programs. But these are increasingly being promoted by governments around the world to fill the demand for 

cheap labor. In practice, these schemes create a legalized system 

and structure for employers to exploit workers and increase workers’ vulnerability to human trafficking and other forms of severe 

labor exploitation. 
27 

Such programs have been plagued by a long history of abuses, 

ranging from labor violations to visa fraud, debt bondage, involuntary servitude and trafficking for labor exploitation. This includes, 

among many others, the U.S. H–2 visa guest-worker program. And 

we heard testimony from our colleague from the Department of 

Labor about the H–2A, but I would like to emphasize the H–2B 

visa program; seasonal agricultural programs in Canada, such as 

the Canadian-Guatemala Program; seasonal agricultural programs 

in Europe such as Moldovan migrant workers going to Italy; and 

the kafala, or sponsorship system, in the Gulf Cooperation Council 

states. 

In my written testimony, I go into detail about some of these 

abuses, but we already talked about that, so I’ll skip over that, but 

just want to emphasize two common themes that we see come out 

of these temporary-visa programs. 

One of them, we talked about a little bit earlier is the role of foreign-labor recruiters or employment agencies sometimes also called 

foreign-labor contractors, and taking advantage of the lack of labor 

rights and inherent structural failures in these programs to exploit 

immigrant workers. The other theme that we see is the need to 

provide greater protections to workers and the opportunities for 

them to report abuses and advocate for their own rights. 

We’ve already talked a lot about the issues of debt bondage as 

some of the problems of foreign labor recruiters. I want to get to 

some of the solutions. The Solidarity Center is a proud member of 

the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, or ATEST, which is 

a coalition of 12 organizations including Julia’s organizations and 

many groups that are currently in this room. And we have some 

suggestions for the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2011 that would help increase regulation of foreignlabor recruiters that we think is key to ending trafficking. 

In 2008, as you know, Chairman Smith, there were actually 

some of these provisions included in the House version of the bill. 

And then unfortunately it didn’t pass the Senate, so it didn’t end 

up in the final version. But we would really like to see it back in 

the 2011 version. And what we’ve seen is a number of service providers in the United States have said that greater regulation of foreign-labor recruiters and eliminating debt bondage would go a long 

way to preventing human trafficking in the United States. 

So we’re recommending, among many recommendations, first of 

all, strict elimination of fees, that no foreign-labor contractor agent 

or employee of a foreign-labor contractor should be allowed to assess any fee whatsoever, including visa fees, processing fees, transportation fees, legal expenses, placement fees and other costs to 

any worker. And employers, if they paid this to the foreign-labor 

contractor, should not be allowed to pass this on to workers. 

The other key element that we would like to see in the TVPRA 

of 2011 is greater disclosure, that workers are in a written contract 

both in English and the primary language of the worker, the written contract disclose fully the terms and conditions of work; and 

the details of that are in my written testimony. 

Senator Cardin asked Ambassador CdeBaca earlier about some 

of the role of the consular officers. And I have to say that that pamphlet that was mandated in 2008, TVPRA, has made a great dif-
28 

ference. We have a number of service providers who specifically say 

that workers in the H–2A program and others who have been given 

T visas to the United States say they found out about services 

through that pamphlet. And so we think greater disclosure in 

workers’ contracts itself would really go a long way in helping to 

prevent trafficking. 

We also think that registration of foreign-labor recruiters is key. 

And our recommendation includes administrative procedures for 

the Department of Labor to register foreign-labor recruiters and 

that employers should be required to use a certified, registered 

labor recruiter or face penalties. 

The last two pieces that we’d like to recommend are enforcement—I mentioned that we recommend an administrative procedure within the Department of Labor, but that also workers need 

to be given access to civil remedies and rights to access U.S. courts 

to be able to enforce their rights. 

And then finally, accountability; that workers must be protected 

from retaliation and employers must be held accountable for the 

actions of foreign-labor contractors that they hire. One of the big 

things that we are seeing as organizations that work on human 

trafficking for labor exploitation in the United States is that the 

threat of deportation is unfortunately being used against workers 

to stop them from reporting violations and from getting benefits of 

the T visa program. And we’ve actually seen a number of cases recently in the United States where it’s taken years for workers to 

be identified as trafficking victims and get T visas, and that threat 

of deportation being used against them in keeping them suppressed. 

And so we would also like to recommend a change in the 2011 

TVPRA that provides temporary immigration relief to whistleblowers, to workers who raise the alarm about cases but that it 

might take them some time to be able to be found as victims of 

trafficking, so that during that time, they don’t have to fear deportation, they don’t have to fear threats; and instead, there can be 

an investigation done about the abuses that they’re raising. 

Just the last thing that I’ll mention is—I know Julia’s going to 

talk a lot more about supply chains, so I’m not going to focus a lot 

on that—but that when I was looking at the—when I was asked 

to testify today and looking at the topic for this hearing, I thought 

it was important to mention another major trend in the global 

economy is the use of trafficking for slave labor and slavery victims 

all along supply chains; and that when employers, whether they’re 

buyers, multinational corporations or others, demand cheap labor 

or unrealistic pricing structures, they should not be surprised to 

find severe labor abuses, including slavery in their supply chains. 

Similarly, when employers contract out or hire unregulated subcontracted suppliers, they should not be surprised to find that 

there are trafficking victims in the production lines. And when employers refuse to enforce or claim that it is too difficult to monitor 

adherence to core labor standards in their supply chains, they will 

find forced labor, debt bondage and other severe forms of labor exploitation. And Julia, I know, will talk about the California law. 

ATEST is also advocating that it be included nationally in the 

TVPRA. But the one thing that at Solidarity Center we’d like to 
29 

point out is that we think that it needs to be looked at about how 

the United States does investigations abroad of products that are 

made with forced labor or slavery. 

And just as an example, the Solidarity Center had a report in 

2007 called ‘‘The True Cost of Shrimp,’’ which looked at the seafood-processing industry both in Thailand, in Bangladesh. And we 

found severe cases of forced labor, human trafficking, debt bondage, 

especially Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. As a result of our 

report, the U.S. Senate asked ICE to do an investigation about 

what was in our report. And so ICE did what they call a ‘‘jump investigation,’’ and they went to both Thailand and Bangladesh to investigate. 

The problem is that they have to notify, of course, the Thai Government that they were coming. And our partners on the ground 

reported that basically the supply chains are completely cleansed. 

They had 2 weeks’ notice to know that they were coming. The 

books were changed. A lot of the Burmese migrant workers were 

sent off. And we have a lot of anecdotes I could tell you about that, 

but that basically ICE said to us that they had to say that they 

did not find anything that was in our report there. And it was basically because they had to let the government know. 

And so we’d like to advocate to try to find a better way to do 

these investigations so that we ensure that products made with 

forced labor, human trafficking and slavery to not enter the U.S. 

market. 

Thank you so much for this opportunity to testify. I look forward 

to your questions. 

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Misra, thank you very much for your testimony 

and your work. And now, Julia Ormond, you’re recognized. 

JULIA ORMOND, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, THE ALLIANCE 

TO STOP SLAVERY AND END TRAFFICKING 

Ms. ORMOND. I learn something every time at these things. I’ve 

learned so much from the previous testimonies. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, and distinguished Members of the Commission and 

staff. I initially engaged about the issue of slavery and human trafficking shocked and spurred into action by reports of sex trafficking. Nothing then seemed to me more heinous than the repeated rape and violence that its victims endured. 

The wide variety of the faces of slavery that I met—the first were 

California-based. Other travels around the world took me to Russia, Ghana, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and Europe, and provided 

me with a creepy and shocking perspective of how slavery pervades 

my own life, how I am unwittingly connected to it and ultimately 

connected to its systemic violence. People often ask—it was a question that came up—where in the world is this worst? My answer 

is always in my home. 

It’s simply not possible to sit easily in Los Angeles and forget the 

enslaved children I have met, children that I have walked away 

and left to an uncertain fate. And what keeps me up at night, what 

haunts me, are all of the victims’ stories. I’ll never forget the girl 

who crawled out of an eight-floor window for fear of her life in sex 

slavery. But I can equally never forget the child enslaved in the 

fishing industry, who jumped ship into the Thai Sea to float on a 
30 

barrel for 2 days and a night before being rescued because that was 

his safest option; or the child who was chained, whipped, and 

scarred for life while maybe working on our carpets; or the child 

soldier forced to burn his village, kill his mother, and rape his sister for someone else’s war; or the enslaved garment worker making 

my clothing or the footage of a Mayan agricultural slave in Florida 

picking my tomatoes. These people are no less deserving of all of 

our compassion than those forced into sex slavery. All victims of 

trafficking and slavery deserve our attention and our commitment. 

In 2007, I founded the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking, otherwise known as ASSET. ASSET’s an advocacy organization dedicated to eradicating slavery and trafficking through amplifying the victim’s voice and supporting systemic solutions. I have 

come to define enslavement as when one person completely controls 

another person, uses violence or violent threat to maintain that 

control, exploits them economically and pays them effectively nothing. Trafficking is a process of enslaving someone. 

Under the tenure of Ambassador CdeBaca, the 2010 Annual Report to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons stated that 

more people are trafficked into forced labor than commercial sex. 

Yet ask any member of the public what proportion of this issue is 

sex trafficking, and the usual response is about 80 percent. The 

International Labor Organization has recently stated that for every 

one person forced into the sex trade, nine people around the world 

are forced to work. 

The forced labor of these victims taints many of the products 

that we purchase and rely on every day. To quote the TIP report: 

It is not possible ‘‘to get dressed, drive to work, talk on your phone, 

or eat a meal without touching products tainted by’’ slavery. 

The United Nations has repeatedly stated that trafficking has 

shifted from trafficking weapons to trafficking in drugs to trafficking in people, and now into children. The United Nations Office 

on Drugs and Crime has cited that the profits from trafficking in 

people into Europe has now overtaken the profits in the trafficking 

of drugs into Europe. Yet, in the United States we spend more in 

1 day still fighting the war on drugs than we spend in an entire 

year fighting the trafficking of people. 

So we all have a role to play in supporting the solutions, and solutions, there are many. Every single place I travelled to, I specifically sought out solutions that just await the resources to scale to 

meet a drastic need. 

In order to resource the solutions, however, it’s vital to get the 

story straight. And media can play a crucial role. Sex will always 

sell, whether the story is good or bad. But we need the media to 

cover the issue fairly, proportionately. We need media outlets to set 

aside deliberate resistance of losing advertising revenue, and articulate how businesses can use their influence over supply chains 

to recreate the map to illuminate the worst areas of poverty in the 

world where slavery and trafficking can take hold. 

As advocates, we need to do a better job articulating to the public 

the enormous challenges that today’s complex supply chains 

present to business. We need to articulate that the CEO is most 

often not the criminal, that this is criminal activity tainting their 

supply chain most often around raw materials, but as we have 
31 

heard today, on many other points of intersect along the supply 

chain, just as shoplifting is criminal activity occurring at the other 

end of the supply chain, at the point of purchase. 

Only by rediscovering the supply chain and influencing each step 

of it by encouraging best practices can we implement real solutions, 

can the NGO work with the CEO. A supply chain without a policy 

of best practices is like a computer without virus protection: You 

will most likely become infected with a virus or tainted by labor 

violations. 

We need companies to come to the table and collaborate in finding better solutions to work with governments and the NGO community who can offer victims safety and rehabilitation, and can assist vulnerable communities. We cannot accurately and efficiently 

access victims without the assistance of companies that influence 

infected supply chains. 

I think one of the most crucial pieces that I’ve learned is that 

this is a verification of a process: Whether you are growing, picking, selling tomatoes out of Florida, or purchasing couture clothing, 

you will find slaves. The point is that the better your practices 

along the supply chain, the less you will find them, and the better 

your practices, the better your response will be at that moment. 

ASSET’s solution was to be primary sponsor of the California 

Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010, authored brilliantly by 

Senator Darrell Steinberg, who I have to thank deeply. This law 

came into effect January 2011, and requires major retailers and 

manufacturers operating in California with over $100 million in 

worldwide gross receipts to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains. 

This law will apply to just over 3,000 companies, around 4 percent of California companies who represent an umbrella of approximately 87 percent of economic activity in the State. This new law 

is one small step in a long journey forged by others that ASSET 

joined. 

I hope if it’s applied well that it will represent a watershed in 

the sharing of knowledge, and will enable active consumer, investor 

and other stakeholder engagement, will encourage a pooling of resources, and will get us closer to concrete, measurable results. 

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act will for the 

first time enable consumers to choose to support businesses that 

are creating best practices, using their purchasing power to encourage them to bring their expertise and knowledge of supply chains 

into the equation. Investors can implement corporate governance 

and social responsibility practices, providing incentives to companies to elevate human rights and place them right at the heart of 

their strategy. 

In one sweep, it’ll educate companies unaware of a possible problem, not just of their own potential vulnerability but also the devastating impact of using company influence to drive profit up by 

forcing the prices of raw materials down to a level where labor violations and criminal activity and suicide are the outcome for the 

raw-material work force. 

It will create an environment where those companies already 

doing the right thing can more robustly and publicly turn it into 

part of their brand identity. And for the next step in the process 
32 

to occur, Congress should enact Federal legislation disclosing the 

presence of slavery, trafficking and all forms of forced labor in the 

corporate supply chain. 

Post-globalization, where I have heard that the public trusts 

brands, identifies with brands more closely than government—the 

supply chain is the modern vehicle through which today we can 

spread liberal democracy throughout the world. 

Thank you for listening. 

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Ormond, thank you very much for your testimony, for being here again, and above all, for your advocacy that 

has led to enactment of this very important landmark legislation. 

Let me just ask, if I could, Ms. Donaldson, you know, the assumption of goodwill or the potential of goodwill obviously 

undergirds the multilateral framework. Obviously most, if not, all 

United Nations, ILO, any convention always has a problem on the 

enforcement side. That’s no fault of your own; it’s just the way it 

works. But I think you said consensus can be built. And I’m wondering if the Transparency in Supply Chain Act of 2010 might not 

fit best into a practice that the ILO could include in its framework 

of best laws that needs to be shared. 

One of the important aspects of when we did the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was to share and invite best practices so we 

could improve our own law but also to give it out liberally. And I 

remember giving a copy that John Finerty on our Commission staff 

translated into Russian to a member of the Russian Duma, who 

then got some of it enacted in the Russian Duma. We want plagiarism, in this case [laughter.] So I’m wondering if the ILO is looking 

at this as a best-practice law that needs to be shared with the 

world, including the 14 agreements that you—or the work you have 

going within the OSCE and elsewhere. 

Ms. DONALDSON. We are very interested to see how this law is 

implemented. And you know, we tend to see California as another 

country, just another economy. And it’s very hard to be a big company anywhere in the world and not have California as one of your 

markets. So in a way, it may not need to be passed in every State. 

But yes, we want to share good practices. And I might say, I see 

this as part of a trend. And it’s also because the USDA guidelines 

that have been issued by the Agriculture Department on best practices in agricultural settings—I see in my conversations with companies that across the board, there are different things coming up. 

And maybe the most intensely discussed right now is actually 

around the conflict minerals. 

But I hear companies, big ones, saying, well, the due diligence, 

that framework that the OSCE has raised, maybe we should use 

this in the context of forced labor or child labor. So it’s creating a 

lot of cross-fertilization. But I do have to say the California law, I 

think, kicked it to another level in terms of more recent legislation. 

So thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Would you want to respond on that? 

Ms. ORMOND. This was a little law that just, I feel, kind of got 

us out of an impasse. It was a moment that we could capitalize on, 

as an NGO, thanks to the work that had been done by the ILO. 

I think we actually did take some of your practices [laughter] we 

took an amalgamation of best practices, but the law is designed in 
33 

such a way that allows the corporation to come in with what businesses see idiosyncratically within their own supply chain. Each industry has different, idiosyncratic problems so the NGO community 

can’t really sit from the outside and dictate to them. Plus, they’ll 

bring a totally different mindset and innovation to finding solutions. 

So the law is designed in such a way that we make suggestions 

as to best practices, we make suggestions in terms of talking to the 

ILO, but we also open it up to say, just—well, tell us what you are 

doing so that we can rate it. 

Mr. SMITH. Commissioner Cohen does have to leave, so I’d like 

to yield to him for any questions. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a hearing at 4— 

another Ranking Member—but I want to ask Ms. Ormond, who 

were the main opponents to your law in California? 

Ms. ORMOND. Thank you for landing me in it. Well, let’s put it 

this way: There was not a single business in California that supported it. And I think we were very lucky to have a Governor who 

didn’t veto it, and who stood up and asked if this is a job-killer, 

and I don’t think it is. I think it’s a lifesaver. 

I think there are challenges. I don’t want to presume that people 

go into it with malicious intention; I think very often, there are 

stumbling blocks that because we’re not discussing it because 

there’s lack of transparency, we can’t get to the solution. So within 

different industries, individual brands and companies aren’t actually sharing with each other what they’re learning. 

So I think as this—the first step is to sort of move industries— 

like, you have conflict minerals; you have the tech industries coming together to work on that. And in a parallel, you have people 

sharing best practices around cotton. 

If we don’t move it forward in terms of raising it up, then I think 

it really has a devastating effect. I think the California Grocers Association—— 

Mr. COHEN. They opposed the law and fought it? 

Ms. ORMOND. Yes. And it took me by surprise because I thought, 

well, isn’t this good for California? Can’t they verify more easily 

than somebody who’s reaching out to the developing world? And I 

think we just haven’t really gotten to the bottom of how they deal 

with undocumented workers. I think it made it difficult for them 

legislatively to answer to that, because we didn’t really deal with 

it. 

Mr. COHEN. Did the chamber or any other organized groups of 

business, manufacturers, et cetera—did any of them come out and 

work against it? 

Ms. ORMOND. Yes. 

Mr. COHEN. They did? [Laughter.] 

Yes? [Laughter.] 

Ms. ORMOND. Yes. They did. I mean, we went back and forth. We 

had support from consumers and consumer rights—we had a terrific support from socially responsible investment firms that represented $42 billion. And I think what we saw emerging was, the 

consumer is one stakeholder; the next consumer to engage through 

apps and writing letters and Internet and viral is the employee. 

Employees work better in an environment that they’re happier 
34 

with; they’re more productive. You can go to the investor; you can 

go to shareholders with the proxy votes. 

And what we want the consumer to understand is that they are 

not—they are disempowered as an individual to a certain extent. 

But you rally them as a force together, they will drive what happens down the supply chain because they will demand that supply 

chains be cleaned up, or they will leave that brand and go to someone who is doing a better job. 

Mr. COHEN. Was the vote close on your bill? 

Ms. ORMOND. Sometimes. I mean, different—there were—— 

Mr. COHEN. Stages. 

Ms. ORMOND. Different stages that we had to go through. What 

I have always loved about this issue is that it’s a bipartisan issue. 

It’s something that I will say in terms of the coalition, a task that 

we work on—it’s bipartisan. And it has to be, for longevity. 

What I do want to say about the bill is, I think it provides an 

engagement point for the consumer to actually physically take action. There’s a lot of awareness from an employee standpoint people can have; one little Web site that we participated in setting up 

has now sent off 97,000 emails to CEOs asking them, what are 

your practices? And they’ve got until January in 2012 to say ‘‘no 

response.’’ 

And I also—if I may, just a bit before you leave, I want to talk 

about how when a supply chain is tainted, it may be tainted by 

very few individuals. But there’s one example—there’s a terrific 

documentary called ‘‘End of the Line’’ which looks to the decimation of the fish population. Fishing is an industry that has a lot of 

issues. One boat coming in with two loads of cargo—I wrote it 

down somewhere; I want to get it right—one of those boats can 

come up with—I think it was the entirety of Taiwan’s quota for one 

fishing season. 

So one or two criminals can decimate and destroy a supply chain. 

And I think that’s what we’re seeing in fishing; we’re talking about 

having 20 to 50 years left of fish. It isn’t those that have been 

given a quota and are meeting that quota that are causing that 

decimation; it’s illegal fishing. It is illegal deforestation that is 

causing huge environmental damage. And if we don’t look to it, I 

believe that that is where this issue feeds all the way through to 

being an international security issue. 

Mr. COHEN. I thank you for appearing before us, and your work, 

and the other panelists as well. And I wish I had more time to stay 

here, but I’ve got an obligation. I’ve learned a lot. As you say you’ve 

learned, I learned from this Commission. And there’s no greater 

human rights champion than the Chairman, and I will work with 

him on legislation to improve our work product. 

You asked me earlier, do we have an audience? Well, you have 

a great audience here with Chairman Smith. 

Ms. ORMOND. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Cohen, thank you very much, and thank you for 

your leadership. Let me just ask a couple of other questions, if I 

could. And I think Commissioner Cohen’s comments, or one of your 

comments was very well-taken about a corporation—what corporations don’t do business in California. I mean, it’s just about the 

world. 
35 

But I do think there could come in 2012 some real issues of faithfulness on the part of the corporations. And so the question would 

be, how do we ensure compliance with the mandates of the California law? Would the Federal law fill some gaps that perhaps 

dropped off as the legislation was making its way through, and 

would the additional firepower, if you will, of a Federal statute further prioritize and ensure that these corporations are, indeed, 

being very faithful? 

We found even when we passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, I had to hold an oversight hearing right here, 9 months 

later, to ensure that major provisions where it said you shall set 

up a TIP office, you shall establish a T visa—nothing in it said 

‘‘may’’; it all said ‘‘shall.’’ 

And even here, with the traditional separation of powers and the 

checks and balances that are obviously a very good thing, we had 

to have an oversight hearing—and I chaired it—to ensure that the 

major revisions were carried out. Because delay is denial, and I 

would be very worried that some corporations will game the system, be inadequate. 

So what are the advantages of a Federal law? And do other 

states have to pass a law, or would that be—I mean, what corporations, again, like I said before, are not doing business in California? 

Ms. ORMOND. Well, one of the things that we do have to do is 

get the list of who the 3,200 companies are from the Attorney General’s office. And I think that’s something, for instance, that you 

would want to put into Federal law, that automatically the list of 

who is covered gets made public so the NGOs aren’t scrambling to 

do that math. 

There’s a number of things. I mean, for me what the bill does is 

move us forward a step so that for instance we pave the way for 

a commission to come in. Prior to the bill, the commission couldn’t 

verify it, or certify anything. So it wasn’t possible to do it. 

But I also think that we have to kind of slightly change the 

mindset. I want to talk about fair trade a little bit, and how fair 

trade—I should rewind a bit—the greatest and most effective part 

of prevention is the alleviation of poverty, and providing people 

with alternative solutions. And I feel that’s what fair trade goes in 

and elevates the process for people; they create communities who 

work together and keep each other on track. And they then give 

a premium to the farmers once they have helped them get them to 

the level of being an export. 

And mangos out of Haiti would be a great example—the mangos 

from Haiti that are sold in Whole Foods may well be something 

that elevates Haiti out of a really tragic circumstance. And I think 

we need to move toward that. 

What I also like about the California bill—people talk a lot about 

enforcement—the consumer’s going to enforce it. Out of 3,200 companies, say, there are 50 who comply, and the rest don’t. You’ve got 

50 brands for people to switch to. You don’t have to wait for the 

Attorney General to do anything. You’ve already clarified who’s 

doing great work and who doesn’t. 

And I think that the Federal bill will work. We’ve—all the way 

through we had a collaborative approach to business, and that’s the 

only way that you could get to the solutions. It can’t be done any 
36 

other way. And it will be fair and it will be reasonable and it will 

be doable for business. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, thank you. 

Ms. MISRA. I’m not an expert on this as Julia is, but I’ve heard 

a couple of things that I think are interesting. One, we’ve heard 

that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not opposing a Federal bill 

on this, because they do want to see kind of the playing field leveled in the sense that it would apply everywhere in the United 

States and not just in California, which is an interesting and surprising result from this. And I’ve also just been receiving a lot of 

emails from people about trainings that are already popping up. 

The University of Delaware is doing a training for sourcing managers on the bill, and so there are already companies getting ready 

in figuring out ways. 

And then just from our perspective, we’re an allied organization 

of the AFL–CIO, and we’ve already had conversations with unions 

in the United States about kind of taking the role that Julia’s saying on consumers and holding people accountable. We know who a 

lot of the big players are in the sectors that we know that there’s 

slavery, and sort of kind of start targeting them and making sure 

that that’s happening. And, hopefully, it will trickle down. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes. 

Ms. DONALDSON. Just two observations. I think we are going to 

see a real mix. I’ve seen legal opinions online where the lawyers— 

corporate lawyers say, well, the way you could interpret this is, you 

just have to say what you were doing on monitoring forced labor, 

and you can just you’re not doing anything in particular and that’s 

how to suffice the law. And so you may see some of that. 

I think that’s going to be difficult because of the reports, like the 

reports required by the TVPA, which say, well, these are countries 

where we think there may be risk of problems. It’s a little harder 

if you’re sourcing from those countries to say, well, there’s no problem in our supply chains that we’ve ever seen, and that takes care 

of it. 

So there’s no question that interaction between State and Federal law is important. And I guess what I would say, we don’t take 

a position on particular laws, but we are collecting best practices. 

We look forward to seeing what happens in this one. And I do 

think that the mix of laws and strategies going on is having a really dynamic effect. 

And I will say one thing. Once companies leave denial and go 

into ‘‘How could we do it?’’ and then they move to, ‘‘We have to do 

something’’—when enterprise and its ingenuity comes into play, 

amazing things happen. And I have to say, I’m getting excited 

about watching the companies that are at the front end of this, because they’re solving problems that no one else has quite seen, and 

that’s what we want more of. And I do think it’s possible that that 

virtuous circle, spurred on by these different laws together, and 

maybe some Federal laws as well, is going to create the process, 

is creating a process that we can partner with each other. Because 

no one company can solve these problems, and no one country, and 

that’s why we say we have to really work together. And the activists have an irreplaceable role. 

Thank you. 
37 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask you with regard to your deadline or 

your goal by 2015 of eliminating forced labor worldwide, who on 

the board would make the decision whether or not to incorporate 

the new California law into a best law practice that needs to be 

looked at by other countries? It seems to me that if the U.K. and 

other countries were to—the House of Commons passed a similar 

law, the House here, obviously, and the Congress—it would add an 

enormous pressure not just for reporting, but for accurate reporting, because the Web site would be scrutinized by not just California and the NGOs that are so concerned, like Julia Ormond’s 

group and yours, but it would be a—it seems to be more hands 

pulling on the oar, the greater that ship will move and forced labor 

will be eradicated. 

Who makes that decision? 

Ms. DONALDSON. Well, ultimately our body of countries and the 

international labor companies pass standards. 

Mr. SMITH. Right. 

Ms. DONALDSON. But we can do things much faster than that because it takes time and consideration, to pull together best practices. And we are asked to advise countries all the time on how 

they might solve those issues. And so I’d be happy to come back 

and let you know exactly what we are doing on that, because I 

would—I’ll inquire. 

Mr. SMITH. Is it something that if we were to put together a letter from Members of the House and Senate asking that the ILO 

look to—both on a fast track and as—you know, 2015 is not far 

away—to look at bringing on line this very valuable—and I would 

say there’s nothing little about this, Ms. Ormond, as you said. This 

is huge. And one State the size of California could make all the difference in the entire world. But if you could, you know, we would— 

we could put together a letter that would try to get you to adopt 

it as a best practice, if you thought that would be helpful. 

Ms. DONALDSON. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask Ms. Misra with regard to regulating 

foreign labor recruiters. I chaired a hearing some years back when 

we discovered in the 2003 act, we put provisions in, in 2005, when 

we learned that U.S. corporations were often complicit, either indifferent or there was woeful ignorance, which is two different ways 

of being complicit, not wanting to know. 

And in Iraq, I asked, a number of questions at two hearings that 

we held jointly with the department, with the Armed Services 

Committee, about labor recruiters, particularly in Jordan, bringing 

in all these people who were slaves working with U.S. taxpayer 

money. And we keep getting assurances that it’s been fixed. I’m not 

convinced. I’m wondering what you think, whether or not that has 

been fixed, if you could. 

Ms. MISRA. Thank you. We’re still hearing stories that it has not 

been fixed, and not just in Iraq, but also Afghanistan, that Jordan’s 

being used. We’ve heard particularly of Nepali and Bangladeshi 

workers. And then it’s also been very interesting with the Arab—— 

Mr. SMITH. They were the same ones who were exploited previously and that we brought attention to. 

Ms. MISRA. Exactly. 
38 

But it’s also very interesting now with the Arab Spring and the 

numbers of people who have been talking about the refugees that 

are crossing the border from Libya and other places, but there’s 

huge numbers, as you know, of migrant workers who are in Bahrain, who are in Syria, who are in Libya and other places, and so 

their fate right now is very interesting. And a lot of them are being 

told by the labor recruiters that brought them over there, well, 

there’s nothing that we can do now, and they’re stranded. And so 

it’s quite interesting. 

And just the global economic crisis: In the United Arab Emirates 

for example, there’s large numbers of Indian migrant construction 

workers who are stuck in the UAE; the jobs dried up because of 

the economic crisis and labor recruiters are refusing to send them 

back, and so a lot of them are just living in camps. 

Mr. SMITH. With regard to the Transparent Supply Chain Act, I 

know how Julia Ormond feels. Do you feel that there needs to be 

a Federal law? 

Ms. MISRA. Absolutely, yes. 

Mr. SMITH. I know you had some recommendations, but the biggest problem I think we might face would be a Senate 60 votes that 

might be hard to procure. 

Do you have any recommendations on where it should be? Should 

it be in the TVPA reauthorization? You may have mentioned that 

earlier. 

Ms. MISRA. Yes. The coalition that we’re a part of, ATEST, is recommending that it goes into the TVPRA. We think in some ways 

that might be a little bit easier to have it as part of the package. 

But also, a stand-alone bill, we would support both. And so, you 

know, we’ve been having a number of conversations with different 

Senators and different Congress people about—— 

Mr. SMITH. Have you found—and I did ask Ambassador Luis 

CdeBaca earlier whether or not the administration would present 

a model piece of legislation along the same lines as California. 

Do you think that might be forthcoming? 

Ms. MISRA. I haven’t heard it coming from the administration 

itself. I have heard of several Representatives in the House that 

are putting that forward, and then our coalition, as I said, is supporting it. But Julie would know that more specifically. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, we hope the two meet. 

Ms. ORMOND. I would say—I guess what I would just add is that 

I—in all honesty, I think the jury’s still out as to the best place 

for the bill, whether or not it be something that’s folded into TVPA 

afterwards. But currently language that is being kicked around in 

terms of a Federal bill is placing it under the auspices of SEC. 

And I think in terms of is it worth doing nationally, is it worth 

doing as a Federal—I think the Federal bill gives it more teeth and 

raises awareness of it throughout the United States, and then the 

United States takes a leadership role. 

But we currently don’t have the list from the Attorney General. 

So we need to run the figures again. Because if you’ve got 3,200 

companies in California and nationally you would have 3,201, it 

would be nice to know, is it just once more? Can we just go straight 

to the EU? 
39 

And I just want to say that it isn’t a perfect silver bullet. It’s a 

starting point. And I think it does remain to be seen how the community that works on this responds to it and gets imaginative 

around it. But there definitely are stumbling blocks. There are 

stumbling blocks around conflict minerals and rare Earth minerals 

that only come out of the Congo. There are stumbling blocks in 

terms of human rights in China and places we can’t get in. But I 

think it kicks the needle forward and challenges business to help 

us come up with a solution, and don’t leave the table until we’ve 

made it. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Yes. 

Ms. MISRA. May I just say one more thing also? Just jumping 

over to the foreign labor recruiter provisions, since you’re talking 

about national versus stand-alone bills and folding into TVPRA, I 

know there’s been some discussions about having a separate bill on 

regulating foreign labor recruiters, and I really want to urge you 

and the House of Representatives to consider folding it into the 

TVPRA, because when it is a separate bill, it gets caught up a lot 

in comprehensive immigration reform and questions of that. And 

we think, while those are important questions to address, if we address foreign labor recruiters from the perspective of it being a 

trafficking problem and being able to address it in the TVPRA, we 

may be able to get a lot further than if we had it be a stand-alone 

bill that kind of got caught up in the comprehensive immigration 

reform. So—but thank you for letting me jump that little piece—— 

Mr. SMITH. No, if you could answer, because you worked extensively in Indonesia and elsewhere—— 

Ms. MISRA. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. How do you recommend we pierce a place like China, 

where a person even doing investigations into this kind of heinous 

activity could land themselves into prison for 10 or 15 years and 

be subjected to torture? Even the corporations often do a ‘‘see no 

evil, hear no evil’’ mind-set about the sources of their materials, because they don’t want to be kicked out, they don’t want their industry nationalized and they don’t want to face potential jail time. 

Ms. MISRA. Absolutely. 

Mr. SMITH. I’m wondering if on the Web sites might there be a 

big gap when it comes to China especially? 

Ms. MISRA. Yes, and I wonder about that too. I will say, the Solidarity Center has a China office that we call where we specifically 

work on worker rights issues in China, and so I’m not the expert 

on that. 

But I will say one of the things that we are seeing is that we’re 

increasingly seeing worker actions. You wouldn’t necessarily call 

them the same that—as you see in the United States as strikes 

and other things, but we are seeing workers who are having many 

1-day strikes, taking to the streets, demanding more rights in the 

factories where they’re working. And we really think that the 

United States really needs to be supporting those efforts that we 

are seeing of workers trying to speak out for themselves and enforce their own rights and do more in that regard. And I know our 

office would love to come talk to you more about that. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 
40 

Would anyone else like to add anything before the hearing concludes, Ms. Ormond or—yes. 

Ms. DONALDSON. This is on an earlier subject, but I thought I 

could just mention one of the things that ILO’s been doing recently—I think it was maybe in December—we had a conference in 

the Gulf States, and it was primarily focused on Embassy staff and 

economic officers from various Embassies. And we were—I think 

we were looking in particular in the labor trafficking issues from 

Nepal. But it was a very interesting way to have countries—and 

I wouldn’t be surprised if the United States was involved as well, 

but other countries there as well—to develop a network of representative officers to work with each other to spot illegal-labor 

processes. It was very productive, so we’re looking at how to do 

that in other places, too. And so the requirements that have happened as they were discussed, and Ambassador CdeBaca was talking about, just to let you know, that’s something that can be built 

on, because if that’s their responsibility and they’re talking to counterparts, then it creates a different level of looking at it. 

Mr. SMITH. Is there anything else? 

Ms. ORMOND. Just to say thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

I want to thank our very distinguished witness. I do believe that 

S. 657 is an historic bill that will have overwhelmingly positive 

consequences. So, I thank you, Julia Ormond, for your extraordinary leadership in crafting and using your persuasive powers, 

which are very real and compelling, to get that legislation. And I 

think you gave great, I think, accolades to the Senate, sponsored 

the President Pro Tem. And I think that was a very—you know, 

it does take a lawmaker, but it does take people just like you and 

our two other distinguished witnesses to make all of this happen. 

So I thank you sincerely for your extraordinary leadership. 

Ms. ORMOND. Thank you. Mr. SMITH. The hearing is adjourned. [Whereupon at 4 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.] 
(41) 

A P P E N D I X 
42 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

Welcome to today’s hearing, part of the Helsinki Commission’s ongoing efforts to 

combat human trafficking in all of its aspects. I had the privilege of chairing the 

first Commission hearing on trafficking in June 1999. Today our attention turns to 

labor trafficking, a modern-day form of slavery exacerbated by the global economic 

downturn. As with all forms of trafficking, we must never lose sight of the victim— 

the truly human face of men, women and children caught up unwittingly in this 

multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise. 

Having just returned from an international conference: ‘‘Building Bridges of Freedom: Public-Private Partnerships to End Modern-Day Slavery,’’ I am acutely aware 

that, to be successful in combating the scourge of human trafficking, we must 

strengthen the cooperation between governments and the private sector, particularly 

with regards to labor trafficking. 

When I first introduced the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 1998—a landmark bill that was signed into law two years later in 2000—the legislation was met 

with a wall of skepticism and opposition. People both inside of government and out 

thought the bold new strategy that included sheltering, asylum, and other protections for the victims, long jail sentences and asset confiscation for the traffickers, 

and tough sanctions for governments that failed to meet minimum standards, was 

merely a solution in search of a problem. I vividly recall raising the trafficking issue 

at a gathering of parliamentarians meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1999 and 

being met with a similar reaction. 

Each year tens of thousands of victims are trafficked into the United States from 

throughout the world. The United States has been at the forefront of efforts to combat human trafficking in all its forms, including labor trafficking, following adoption 

of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Our government has undertaken 

the vast challenge of tracking slavery around the world. We have developed strategic reporting tools such as the Trafficking in Persons Report; the List of Goods 

Produced with Child and Forced Labor and the Findings on the Worst Forms of 

Child Labor, and the world has taken notice. While considerable progress has been 

made, I am deeply concerned of the 56 OSCE participating States, twenty were 

ranked as Tier 2, with another eight placed on the Tier 2 Watch List. 

Our efforts would not have been possible without the invaluable contribution of 

civil society in the U.S. helped us write the law and all subsequent iterations. As 

we reauthorize certain sections of the Act, which expire at the end of September, 

civil society representatives have flooded my office—and I’m sure Ambassador 

CdeBaca’s, who was with me at the Rome conference, has some thoughts about ways 

to improve U.S. policy and implementation. 

Catholic Relief Services and many other effective NGOs continue to push for expansion of shelters—places of refuge and protection, places where victims, mostly 

women, can begin the arduous process of healing. On the prevention and protection 

side, civil society advocated—and continues to push for—adequate shelters as well 

as political asylum for victims and their families—the latter as a means of mitigating retaliation. I have visited trafficking victim’s shelters in countries throughout 

the world, including Russia, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Brazil, 

Bosnia, Italy and elsewhere. 

Working with Shared Hope International and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, last year a group of us tried to establish federally funded shelters 

for trafficked minors in the U.S. Although the legislation passed both chambers, the 

versions were different and the clock ran out before they could be reconciled. 

As we all know, traffickers prey upon those in poverty and those lacking even the 

prospect of a job. 

In Moldova, Catholic Relief Service’s documented that high-school age girls were 

disappearing into human trafficking in large part due to the extreme lack of job opportunities. CRS created the Moldova Employment and Training Alliance, which encouraged private sector companies to expand in rural villages. 

‘‘Employers developed vocational training and then guaranteed job opportunities 

after successful training. The Project, which directly benefited 3,300 young women 

[and close to 4,000 indirect beneficiaries], also offered support services to address 

social factors such as domestic violence, substance abuse in families, and lack of fi-
43 

nancial services. These factors are all cited as high-risk factors. The project created 

opportunities for young women to obtain dignified employment within Moldova, and 

the option to remain in and contribute to their communities. It therefore reduced 

the need to seek employment outside of the country.’’ 

As a destination country, we must recognize that here in our very own backyard, 

thousands of people are trafficked from all over the world to work on our farms, 

our hotels, our restaurants and even to serve as our domestic workers. What’s even 

more shocking is that many of these labor migrants enter the country legally 

through our own immigration system, deceived by their traffickers who sold them 

a dream. 

In my work as the Special Representative for Human Trafficking in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe 

[OSCE PA], and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on 

Human Rights, I often find that my role is to facilitate the innovations of civil society. For example, Airline Ambassadors and Innocence at Risk took the fact that the 

airlines were being used by human traffickers to move victims and created a strategy to combat it. Flight attendants noticed suspicious circumstances, but had no 

idea what to do and would just move on to the next row. Airline Ambassadors subsequently launched the Child Trafficking Initiative, which provides flight crews with 

the essential information they need to discern a trafficking situation and to notify 

law enforcement on the ground for appropriate action once the plane has landed. 

U.S. funding for anti-trafficking efforts abroad have brought together labor inspectors, police, prosecutors, NGOs, and faith-based organizations. 

Indeed, this afternoon we will focus on various aspects of labor trafficking, including abusive and illegal business practices as well as ways to better educate potential 

migrants of their rights. Among other issues to be considered will be increased education and accountability, foreign labor recruiting practices and enhancing supply 

chain transparency. Labor trafficking remains the most prevalent form of human 

trafficking in the U.S. 

Civil society can, and often successfully does, influence the private sector. Take 

Craigslist, the forum for placing free online classified advertisements, for example. 

Young women were sold on Craigslist, several NGOs swung into action to publicize 

and demand that such evil be ended. In a matter of months, Craigslist’s immoral 

facilitation of sex trafficking was removed from the website. Public-private partnership is essential. 

Obviously, numerous major challenges remain. It falls to us—and like-minded 

people of goodwill everywhere—to meet those challenges head on and wage an unceasing campaign to eradicate human trafficking from the face of the earth. 

Today’s hearing draws from an outstanding field of witnesses possessing expertise 

in various facets of labor trafficking. Their combined effort in the fight against 

forced labor and human trafficking has produced great results in the areas of education, awareness building and even prosecution. The witnesses bios have been distributed so let me introduce our first panel of speakers. 

First up is Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, Director of the State Department Office 

to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. He is joined by Dr. Gabriela Lemus 

who represents the Department of Labor at the Senior Policy Operating Group on 

Trafficking in Persons and who will report on DOL’s policies designed to combat 

trafficking for labor exploitation and eliminating slavery from our supply chains. 

In our second panel we are joined by the Director of the Washington Office of the 

International Labor Organization, Ms. Nancy Donaldson and Ms. Neha Misra, Senior Specialist on Migration and Human Trafficking for the Solidarity Center. Last 

but certainly not least, the founder of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking, a talented actress and tireless humanitarian activist, Ms. Julia Ormond. 

I am grateful to each of these experts for bringing their unique perspectives to 

the table this afternoon. We look forward to your testimonies. 
44 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, 

CO-CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

I appreciate participating in this hearing today as the issue of human trafficking 

has been a major priority of the Helsinki Commission from its very inception. Trafficking in human beings is simply today’s phrase for the scourge of slavery. Something humanity has been afflicted with for thousands of years. 

This Commission has worked for a special representative within the State Department and for the OSCE. Our government has passed some of the most stringent 

reporting requirements in the world to help both of these representatives do their 

jobs effectively. 

Over the years, the Helsinki Commission has primarily focused its efforts on 

human trafficking for sexual exploitation and for good reason because of the extent 

of the problem. 

It is overdue, however, that we also look at trafficking for the purposes of labor 

exploitation in these exceptionally troubling economic times. 

It is true that labor migration is an important economic engine that promotes 

growth throughout the OSCE region. However, the labor migration process in many 

countries is fraught with potential for exploitation, robbing those seeking decent 

work of their human rights and dignity. This exploitation ripples throughout our 

product supply chain and services that Americans use every day. The 56 participating States of the OSCE region include many origin countries for labor migrants 

to Europe, North America, and areas beyond the OSCE’s borders. Even in our own 

system, legally documented labor migrants can find themselves in debt bondage for 

migration costs or circumstances of involuntary servitude. Many of these instances 

remain underreported in our own data collection mechanisms. 

I am pleased to hear that interagency coordination is under way to harmonize efforts to combat human trafficking and forced labor between the Department of State 

and the Department of Labor. This cooperation will indeed lead to a greater understanding of the scope of labor trafficking in our own country and establish best practices for our international partners. 

This hearing is also especially timely given the upcoming reauthorization of the 

Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 [TVPRA]. The Helsinki 

Commission has long played an active role in policy formulation to combat human 

trafficking and facilitate international cooperation to this end. As Chairman and 

now Co-Chairman of the Helsinki Commission, I have sought to retain that legacy. 

During Senate consideration of the TVPRA in 2008, I worked closely with my colleagues to ensure that consular services were playing a more active role on the front 

line of visa admissions to prevent trafficking. We included provisions to mandate 

distribution of resource materials and contact information for support to visa applicants so that they could recognize if their migration circumstances could potentially 

become labor trafficking due to the acts of unscrupulous recruiters. Addressing recruiter accountability remains a key priority for future legislative efforts. 

OSCE Special Representative Maria Grazia Giammarinaro stated, ‘‘To eradicate 

human trafficking and forced labor, States should take more effective measures, including with respect to training for public officials likely to come into contact with 

cases of labor exploitation.’’ I feel that this should be a key point of emphasis for 

our work as we seek to reauthorize the TVPRA and move forward to better refine 

victim identification efforts. Only through a greater awareness among our border 

professionals, law enforcement, consular officers, and service providers will trafficking be recognized as a crucial element of forced labor cases. 

Among the forms of modern-day slavery, labor trafficking is an insidious form 

often disguised as legitimate employment opportunities that contribute products and 

services to our economy. In this sense, all Americans have a stake in the problem 

and a capacity to contribute to the solution through more responsible choices. I look 

forward to working with my colleagues to promote greater awareness of labor trafficking and ensure the protection of those who seek to make meaningful contributions to economies throughout the OSCE region. 
45 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR LUIS CDEBACA, DIRECTOR, OFFICE TO

MONITOR AND COMBAT TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Commission 

today. I’d like to thank Chairman Smith for his leadership on the issue of trafficking, and I applaud his decision to use the stature of the Helsinki Commission 

to shed a light on the problem of trafficking for labor exploitation in the United 

States. 

Estimates on the total number of trafficking victims in the world start at 12.5 million on the low end and reach to 27 million on the high end. The victims are fishermen trapped on boats, their passports confiscated, forced to work twenty-hour days. 

They are women drawn away from their homes with the promise of good work, only 

to find themselves trapped as domestic servants with no pay and no way to escape. 

They are men brought overseas by unscrupulous recruiters who put them to work 

in fields and factories and force them to pay back the recruiters’ fees. 

This problem is not isolated in faraway places in the world or limited to countries 

stricken by poverty or lack of opportunity. It’s happening right here in the United 

States. As a federal prosecutor, I saw it firsthand. The reality of this crime becomes 

very clear through the stories of survivors, many of whom found themselves deceived and trapped while in the hopeful pursuit of a life of greater opportunity and 

freedom. 

It’s difficult to know exactly how many victims of labor trafficking there are in 

the United States. Trafficking in persons is a hidden crime, and gathering accurate 

statistics on the number of victims is an ongoing challenge. Victims of trafficking 

are often afraid or unable to come forward, and definitional difficulties, circular reporting, and the frequent intermingling of human trafficking and smuggling make 

accurate reporting nearly impossible. So rather than attempting to precisely outline 

the scope of the problem, I hope this testimony will help to highlight particular challenges in combating labor trafficking, including those singled out by the Commission; summarize the positive steps we have taken; share the promising practices we 

have seen from government, law enforcement, and civil society; and lay out where 

we need to go from here to expand and improve our efforts to combat labor trafficking in the United States. 

The strategy that we use across the US government to address modern trafficking 

is based on the 3P Paradigm—prosecution, protection, and prevention—set forth in 

the UN Palermo Protocol, the decade-old document that established the framework 

for the modern anti-trafficking movement. In all three areas, we are seeing 

progress, and interagency coordination continues to improve so that across government we are united in this struggle. 

In particular, I’d like to praise my colleagues at the Department of Labor [DOL] 

for implementing a rule that strengthens protections for Temporary Agricultural 

Employment H–2A Aliens in the United States. Guest workers are a group particularly at risk for trafficking, and this DOL regulation reduces the risk of worker exploitation by reinstating a requirement that employers provide documentation, as 

part of the application for guest worker visas, that they have complied with the prerequisites for bringing H–2A workers into the country and by returning to a methodology for calculating adverse effect wage rates, which results in higher wages for 

workers. Additionally, DOL has prohibited requiring H–2A workers to pay certain 

fees, including recruitment fees, and improved its own ability to ban employers who 

have committed violations of the agricultural program from filing future H–2A labor 

certification applications. 

Building on that initiative, DOL last year entered into a revised agreement with 

the Mexican Embassy and the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure that 

Mexican workers in the United States are informed of their labor rights through 

their consular offices. This information can assist vulnerable workers, including persons who may have been trafficked. 

And of course, DOL’s lists published by their Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, 

and Human Trafficking, such as the List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or 

Forced Labor, prove invaluable in demonstrating just how closely connected we are 

to this abuse around the world. 

Despite these and other successes, we need to continue building our capacity and 

ensuring that the needed resources are in place to make anti-trafficking efforts 

across government more coordinated and effective. Today, with respect to labor trafficking in the United States, I’d like to look at the way new ideas about prevention 

are going to shape the future of this fight. 

Prevention has long been the afterthought of the 3Ps in comparison to its seemingly more tangible counterparts of prosecution and protection. Prevention has either been relegated to the realm of poster campaigns in airports and train stations, 
46 

or regarded as an abstract goal tied to massive structural problems such as gender 

inequality and poverty. But as our understanding of human trafficking grows, so too 

grows the possibility of making real inroads when it comes to prevention. 

A good place to start is by considering the way those of us in the United States 

interact with labor trafficking on a day-to-day basis, which we all do. Forced labor 

is prevalent in the production of a wide range of raw materials, from cotton and 

chocolate and coffee to steel and rubber and tin. All of us come in contact with products tainted by labor trafficking, and even reputable and responsible corporate citizens can profit from abuse. It is this knowledge that has enabled us in recent years 

to focus on the importance of supply chain monitoring and to call for increased leadership from the private sector. 

Consumer spending and corporate investment in business are significant 

motivators that can turn around a system that has allowed traffickers and economies to operate with impunity. There is an increasing push for consumer transparency, certification, and more rigorous regulation. Research suggests companies 

investing in fair labor practices and labeling their products accordingly improve conditions on the ground and drive up the demand for their products. 

A new push for corporate accountability is emerging, which demands companies 

focus their attentions beyond the places where their products are manufactured or 

processed, and look additionally at the sources of their human capital and the methods of recruitment tied to their supply chains, as well as the places where the raw 

materials are collected, harvested, or mined. Effective supply chain monitoring must 

go all the way down to raw materials. Such research will lead to an understanding 

of supply and demand factors that affect the workers whose labor contributes to 

downstream profits. 

In last year’s Trafficking in Person’s Report [TIP Report], the State Department 

published recommendations for verifiable corporate policies that prohibit the use of 

forced labor through the supply chain. Four major principles can help guide corporate action: • Statements of corporate policy must incorporate truly independent verification; • While remediation is important, when labor abuses rise to the level of a human 

trafficking offense, authorities should be notified; • Governments must redefine norms and set standards to create a space for companies to take the lead on combating modern slavery; • Lending institutions should consider establishing whether a company has a 

forced labor supply chain policy as a factor for determining that company’s credit 

rating. 

The aim of supply chain monitoring is to find trafficking wherever it occurs, 

whether in manufacturing, harvesting of raw materials, or the commercial sexual 

activity aimed at business travelers. This knowledge will allow companies to staff 

and source their supply chains in a manner that diminishes the demand traffickers 

satisfy through violence and exploitation. We have developed a model set of policies 

that we believe will put companies on that path: 

• Taking accountability for all the labor in the supply chain all the way down 

to raw materials, with a pledge to monitor compliance, remediate noncompliance, 

and verify those actions by an independent third party; 

• Honoring the role and voice of the worker as the best check on abuse; 

• Publicly disclosing mechanisms for providing independent, unannounced, and 

thorough audits; 

• Providing effective whistleblower and complaint procedures; 

• Providing clear guidelines for security procedures throughout the supply chains 

to ensure that security forces are not used to intimidate, hold, or abuse workers; 

• Regularly updating shareholders and stakeholders on creation, maintenance, 

and implementation of their related policies; 

• Guaranteeing all workers mobility by strictly forbidding any confiscation of official documents; 

• Committing to providing restitution for victims and other forms of remediation; 

• Complying with trafficking-related local laws and international standards for 

confronting human trafficking and protecting victims; 

• Monitoring labor recruitment practices to ensure those working on guest worker or sponsorship systems are not exploited by recruiters; and 

• Holding employees accountable for any violation or exploitative conduct contributing to trafficking in persons. 

While these recommendations from the TIP Report are a good starting point, we 

have already seen private-sector actors take the next steps by embracing the notion 

of supply-chain monitoring. A conference last winter produced the Luxor Implementation Guidelines to the Athens Ethical Principles. The Athens Ethical Principles 

are the product of a 2006 meeting of NGOs, governments, businesses, international 
47 

organizations, and individuals, and they express a set of values opposed to trafficking in persons. But it was the Luxor conference that put in place standards for 

implementing those principles. According to the guidelines, they seek ‘‘to help move 

beyond aspirational statements to the development of standard operating procedures—a way to move beyond principles to practice and implementation.’’ To date 

nearly 600 companies have adopted the guidelines. 

The Luxor Guidelines represent the future of the way we look at demand for 

forced labor. If there were no demand for the cheap goods tied to forced labor, then 

suddenly the profit motive for traffickers would no longer be worth the risk of engaging in a criminal enterprise. 

And though the success of this approach requires motivated and willing privatesector actors, government’s role will remain central. 

California recently enacted a law that serves as a good example of legislation encouraging the private sector to look at their supply chains and consider their impacts on labor trafficking. California now requires its largest retailers and manufacturers to make public whatever efforts, or lack thereof, they have made to eliminate 

human trafficking from their supply chains. This is not a burdensome piece of legislation; it does not require corporations to adopt sweeping new policies for monitoring 

their supply chains. It just requires transparency. Of course, like the enactment of 

many trafficking laws, it was a partnership between government and the activist 

community that helped usher this process along, and it would not have been possible without the commitment and leadership of Julia Ormond, who will testify before this Commission later today and can likely provide greater insight on this outstanding legislation. 

Beyond legislating, governments can use their leverage as consumers to curb the 

demand for forced labor. We have already taken steps in the US government’s procurement and contracting policies to protect against both sex and labor trafficking. 

The Department of Homeland Security and the Equal Employment Opportunity 

Commission co-chaired a temporary working group on implementation of the Federal Acquisition Regulation to combat modern slavery and its contributing factors 

like the demand for commercial sex. The group is developing a training program for 

the federal acquisition workforce to be considered for adoption by all agencies and 

deployment at the Federal Acquisition Institute. 

Additionally, if government at all levels made commitments to reduce their slavery footprint—to support private-sector partners that had adopted anti-trafficking 

practices—the ripple effect could be tremendous. Forging partnerships to raise 

awareness about slavery footprint issues holds great potential. The State Department Trafficking in Persons Office is currently working with civil society and private sector partners to develop a tool that will allow individuals to determine not 

only their slavery footprint in their purchasing habits, but the steps they can take 

to reduce it. 

Lastly, there can be no substitute for continued strong government action on all 

fronts of the anti-trafficking movement. The United States must continue to prosecute and punish traffickers. We need to enhance our efforts to identify victims, 

offer them protection, and provide survivors with the support and resources they 

need. We need to work with civil society and the international community as a global leader in the fight against modern slavery. 

A decade into the modern anti-slavery movement, we find ourselves at a moment 

to ask the question ‘‘What are the next steps?’’ In the United States, and in many 

places around the world, the legal structures are in place, the political will has 

grown, and we are beginning to see progress. The fact that we’re having a hearing 

on labor trafficking and supply chain monitoring shows how far this movement has 

come. The fact that this commission recognizes the importance of partnering with 

the private sector and civil society speaks to the tremendous potential of what lies 

ahead. I believe that with the engagement of dedicated lawmakers and the commitment of the US government, the next ten years of this struggle will be a decade 

of delivering on what we’ve promised. I look forward to working with you as we continue this important struggle, and I again thank you for the opportunity to testify 

today. 
48 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GABRIELA D. LEMUS, LABOR REPRESENTATIVE TO THE

SENIOR POLICY OPERATING GROUP ON TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS, U.S. DEPARTMENT

OF LABOR

INTRODUCTION

Chairman Smith, Co-Chairman Cardin, and distinguished members of the Commission, on behalf of the Department of Labor and Secretary Hilda L. Solis, thank 

you for the opportunity to discuss the Department’s efforts to combat human trafficking, both domestically and abroad. 

President Obama and Secretary Solis are deeply committed to addressing the 

problem of human trafficking and the Administration and the Department of Labor 

are working to enhance efforts to combat trafficking and assist victims. It has been 

more than a decade since enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 

[TVPA] and the fight against trafficking in persons continues. 

The Department of Labor’s commitment to fighting human trafficking is rooted 

in its long history of working to protect and assist our nation’s most vulnerable 

workers, some of whom may wind up in forced labor. Labor trafficking subjects 

women, children, and men to the most extreme forms of workplace exploitation. 

Workers who are trafficked are denied not only their wages, but their human rights. 

As one of Secretary Solis’ priorities, the Department is engaged both domestically 

and internationally to better serve and protect vulnerable workers. Our efforts to 

ensure that workers are afforded all of their rights under the law include initiatives 

to combat human trafficking in all of its forms. The Secretary leads a coordinated 

effort across the Department to achieve our goal of making progress in this important fight against human trafficking. Under her leadership, the Wage and Hour Division [WHD], the Bureau of International Labor Affairs [ILAB], and the Employment and Training Administration [ETA] work collaboratively to ensure that the 

Department uses all available tools in the most efficient and effective manner to 

protect these vulnerable populations. I am pleased to report to the Commission on 

these efforts. 

THE WAGE AND HOUR DIVISION [WHD] 

The Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor enforces some of the nation’s most comprehensive federal labor laws, including the minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor, the employment of persons with disabilities, family and medical leave, the employment of temporary or seasonal migrant workers, and prevailing wages for government service and construction contracts. These enforcement 

responsibilities allow WHD to have a daily presence in American workplaces and, 

while the Agency does not have responsibility to investigate trafficking directly, 

many of WHD’s investigations take place in industries marked by workers who are 

vulnerable to trafficking. This means the Wage and Hour Division is often the first 

federal agency to make contact with the workers who may have been trafficked or 

may be otherwise employed under abusive conditions in violation of the law. 

In industries with vulnerable workers like restaurants, garment manufacturing, 

and agriculture, investigators interview workers and assess situations where workers may have been intimidated, threatened, or held against their will. Investigators 

also review payroll records and inspect migrant farm worker housing. Criminal activity found in the workplace by WHD investigators may be referred to an appropriate authority as part of standard WHD procedure. After a referral is made, 

WHD’s assistance may be requested to compute back wages to ensure restitution on 

behalf of victims of trafficking, and to assess penalties against the employer. 

WHD representatives currently participate in approximately 25 human trafficking 

task forces around the country, including in Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, and 

Long Island. WHD’s primary responsibility on these task forces is to report trafficking crimes to the task force when detected during the course of an investigation, 

and provide assistance in calculating back wages/restitution owed to victims of trafficking. 

Additionally, WHD is a member of the Federal Enforcement Working Group 

[FEWG], along with the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 

the Department of Homeland Security—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the DOL–OIG. As part of the FEWG, WHD is participating in the development and implementation of a Pilot Federal Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team 

[ACTeam] Program. The goal of the ACTeam Program is to proactively identify and 

assist human trafficking victims; develop victim-centered, multi-disciplinary human 

trafficking investigations; and produce high-impact human trafficking prosecutions 

resulting in the conviction of traffickers, the dismantling of trafficking organizations, and the forfeiture of proceeds and instrumentalities of trafficking offenses. 
49 

WHD’s role in the program focuses on helping to detect trafficking indicators during 

investigations, and computing back wages owed to trafficking victims. DOL’s Office 

of the Inspector General strengthens this collaboration through its expertise in investigating labor racketeering and visa fraud violations that occur in connection 

with labor trafficking offenses. 

Department of Homeland Security [DHS] regulations [8 C.F.R. § 214.14 [a] [2]] 

expressly list certain federal law enforcement agencies that may certify U nonimmigrant status [U visa] applications, including the Department of Labor. Under 

that regulation the Department of Labor is identified as an agency with jurisdiction 

to conduct investigations of violations of laws. In its role of investigating workplace 

laws, the Department of Labor may detect evidence that a worker is a victim of certain criminal activity, including trafficking, that may qualify the worker for U nonimmigrant status. On April 28, 2011, the Department of Labor announced protocols 

to complete, as appropriate, a certification that the individual petitioning for U nonimmigrant status is a victim of a qualifying crime and is, has been, or is likely to 

be helpful in the investigation or prosecution of that crime. This certification must 

be included by an individual in his or her U nonimmigrant status petition to DHS 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The U nonimmigrant status certification 

process has been delegated to the Wage and Hour Division’s regional administrators 

located in five cities around the country. 

In May 2010, to support and enhance WHD’s enforcement efforts, the Department 

entered into a revised Joint Declaration and revised Letters of Agreement with the 

Mexican Embassy and Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, updating 2004 agreements between the two countries. In March 2011, the Department signed a similar 

agreement with the El Salvadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These agreements 

aim to ensure that workers from these countries who are employed in the United 

States are informed about their labor rights through information sharing, outreach, 

education, training, and exchange of best practices. Such information can assist vulnerable workers, including those who may have been trafficked. DOL is also expanding the program to include partnerships with embassies from Central America and 

the Caribbean. In December 2010, ambassadors from nine Central American and 

Caribbean countries met with Secretary Solis to learn about the program and potential areas for partnership. In addition to these formal declarations, WHD also participates in several other outreach and partnership activities to share information 

and leverage community-based resources to more effectively inform workers about 

their rights and how to file wage and hour complaints. 

BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL LABOR AFFAIRS

The Department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs builds relationships and 

funds programs in developing countries to improve working conditions and labor 

standards across the global economy. 

ILAB plays a critical role in bringing to light the dark stories of human trafficking. By bringing these stories to the public’s attention, the Department is hopeful that countries and companies will change their behavior and reform their worst 

practices. On December 15, 2010, the Department released three new reports on 

child labor and forced labor. All three reports include information on persons in severe labor exploitation, such as forced labor, servitude, or debt bondage. Together 

these reports demonstrate that from factories to the farms, abuses of fundamental 

human rights, including human trafficking, still persist in the 21st century. These 

reports are: 

• The List of Goods Produced by Child or Forced Labor, pursuant to the 2005 

Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, identifies 128 goods from 70 

countries that DOL has reason to believe are produced by forced labor, child labor 

or both, in violation of international standards; 

• The List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor, pursuant 

to Executive Order 13126 of 1999, includes 29 products from 21 countries; and 

• The 9th annual Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. DOL has published this report since 2002, but last year the report was reformatted, and for the 

first time identifies gaps in government efforts and includes country-specific suggestions for government action. By providing more analysis and specific suggestions for 

action, the redesigned report provides Congress and Executive Branch agencies with 

useful information to consider when making labor and trade policy. 

Since 1995, the U.S. Congress has appropriated over $839 million to ILAB for programs to combat international child labor. This funding has supported technical assistance projects in more than 80 countries, and reached approximately 1.5 million 

children at risk of or engaged in exploitive child labor. ILO Convention 182 identifies child trafficking as one of the worst forms of child labor, and it is through this 
50 

framework that DOL addresses trafficking in its technical assistance projects. While 

the Department’s technical assistance projects include stand-alone trafficking in persons projects, many also include multi-faceted projects to address other worst forms 

of child labor in addition to trafficking. For example, the Department undertakes 

such projects to: • Provide victims with rehabilitation services and educational opportunities. • Facilitate increased access to economic and vocational opportunities for trafficked victims and their families. • Support awareness raising campaigns about the risks of trafficking. • Build capacity to strengthen enforcement efforts and promote legislative and 

policy reform to incorporate anti-trafficking initiatives. 

• Collect reliable data about trafficking to better understand the problem. 

EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION

Because many of the most vulnerable workers in the United States are temporary 

foreign agricultural workers, the Department’s H–2A program is another significant 

locus of the Department’s efforts to combat trafficking. The Immigration and Nationality Act assigns specific responsibilities for the H–2A program to the Secretary 

of Labor. Among the responsibilities delegated to the Department’s Office of Foreign 

Labor Certification are ensuring that U.S. workers are provided first access to temporary agricultural jobs and that the employment of the foreign workers does not 

adversely affect similarly employed U.S. workers. Accordingly, it is of great importance to the Department that both workers in the U.S. and temporary foreign workers are provided with appropriate worker protections. The Department ensures that 

these statutory responsibilities are met through regulatory standards for the acceptance and processing of employer-filed H–2A applications. 

On March 15, 2010, a final rule addressing the temporary agricultural employment of H–2A aliens in the United States became effective. The H–2A final rule includes enhanced mechanisms for protecting workers, including H–2A temporary foreign workers who are increasingly susceptible to the abuses of dishonest employers 

and their agents such as foreign labor recruiters. The Secretary has tasked the Employment and Training Administration with taking an active role in ensuring compliance with H–2A protections because temporary foreign workers remain unlikely 

to file complaints about violations of their rights under the program. 

The Department believes that requiring employers to bear the full cost of their 

decision to employ nonimmigrant workers is a necessary step toward preventing the 

exploitation of such workers. Therefore, the 2010 Final Rule prohibits employers or 

their agents from seeking or receiving payment of any kind from an H–2A worker 

for any activity related to obtaining the necessary labor certification, including the 

employer’s attorneys fees, application fees, or recruitment costs, unless the employers are being reimbursed for costs that are the responsibility of the worker, such 

as government-required passport fees. The regulation also prohibits ‘‘kick backs’’ 

from the H–2A worker to the employer or any other deductions that reduce the actual wage paid to the worker below the required H–2A wage; and requires employers to pay transportation costs between the place of employment and the place from 

which the H–2A worker has come, as well as subsistence costs, and visa fees. 

Moreover, amidst reports of H–2A temporary foreign workers being required to 

give recruiters thousands of dollars to secure a job, the Department recognized that 

such practices adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers 

by creating conditions akin to indentured servitude, driving down wages and working conditions for foreign and domestic workers. Therefore, the 2010 Final Rule requires employers to contractually forbid foreign labor contractors or recruiters engaged in international recruitment of H–2A workers from seeking or receiving payments from such prospective employees. 

Lastly, in an effort to ensure worker protections and program integrity, the 2010 

Final Rule requires employers to provide the H–2A worker a written copy of the 

work contract no later than at the time the foreign worker applies for a visa, and 

to post and maintain in a conspicuous location at the place of employment a poster 

provided free of charge by the Secretary of Labor which sets out the rights and protections for foreign workers. 

The 2010 H–2A Final Rule’s enhanced enforcement provisions allow the Department to investigate and sanction employers and their agents or attorneys where 

there is a violation of regulation provisions. The possible sanctions include debarment from the program for up to three years, revocation of an already approved 

labor certification, and/or special procedures for future applications where a less 

than substantial violation has occurred. If an employer is found to have failed to 

meet its legal obligations under the 2010 Final Rule, for example by violating the 
51 

prohibition on making workers pay for recruiter fees, the Department may seek recovery of those recruitment fees and obtain temporary or permanent injunctive relief, as well as assess civil money penalties against the employer. These monetary 

penalties demonstrate the Department’s commitment to strengthening the necessary 

enforcement of a law that protects workers who are unlikely to complain to government agencies about violations of their rights under the program. 

CONCLUSION

In today’s global economy, workers in any country are vulnerable to trafficking 

and labor rights abuses. The Department’s innovative and integrated programs help 

workers earn decent incomes and prevent them from being abused and exploited. 

This approach is a vital part of the Administration’s goal of ensuring that 

globalization provides benefits and opportunities for workers everywhere, rather 

than triggering a ‘‘race to the bottom.’’ 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am happy to answer any 

questions the Commission may have on the Department of Labor’s work to combat 

human trafficking. 
52 

1 ILO. 2009. The Cost of Coercion. Geneva. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NANCY A. DONALDSON, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON OFFICE OF

THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION [ILO] 

Chairman Smith, Co-Chairman Cardin and Members of the Commission, thank 

you for inviting me to brief the Commission on the ILO’s perspective and its work 

on migration, forced labor and human trafficking. 

INTERNATIONAL TRENDS

The migration of human beings today is, as it has always been, a function of the 

search for greater opportunity. Each year millions of people leave their homes and 

cross national borders in search of better prospects and greater security for themselves and their families, undertaking jobs ranging from manual labor to science 

and technology. Migration takes place between developed and developing countries 

and among developing countries as well. International migration is on the rise and 

will continue to grow in the coming decades due to growing income inequality and 

wealth concentration across countries, lack of jobs and economic opportunities where 

people live, environmental and natural disasters, political persecution, armed conflict, and lower population growth in most destination countries. 

Ninety percent of all migrants are workers and their families. According to UN 

and ILO estimates, international migrants reached 214 million in 2010, of which 

105 million [49 per cent] are economically active migrants. Women make up almost 

50 per cent of all international migrants. Thus, international migration is primarily 

about the search for decent work and livelihoods. 

Migrants make significant contributions to social progress and welfare in both 

their country of origin and the ‘‘destination’’ countries where they work. They bring 

skills, labor knowledge and initiative to advance economies in host countries. They 

also benefit origin countries—sending money home, and through transfer of technology and critical skills and investments through return migration and Diasporas. 

Today we are here to discuss urgent problems often faced by vulnerable migrant 

populations and individuals, criminal trafficking and forced labor and the actions 

that the ILO and others are taking to eradicate these abuses across national borders 

and within countries. With growing labor demand in some sectors and regions, malpractices by private recruitment agencies involving high fees and misleading information is a substantial issue in the globalized economy. Migrants are vulnerable to 

exploitation, experience deskilling and discrimination, and poor workforce integration in host countries. In the extreme, irregular migration includes trafficking, 

smuggling, sexual exploitation and violence. 

As ILO’s recent report highlights,1 forced labor today is the antithesis of decent 

work and a global problem affecting almost every country in the world. Until very 

recently, the bulk of forced labor and slavery-like practices were bound up with traditional forms of serfdom, with individuals tied to agrarian landlords and others. 

Today forced labor is mostly found in the informal economy in developing and industrialized countries alike. It is affecting vulnerable women much more than before. 

Moreover, a key feature of modern forced labor is the exploitation of the poor and 

vulnerable by intermediaries, and is basically a form of modern debt bondage. There 

are new forms or patterns of coercion creeping into production systems and labor 

markets around the world, mainly in the informal economy, but also sometimes in 

the supply chains of modern industrial enterprises and supermarkets. 

Traditional slavery is still found in some parts of Africa, while forced labor in the 

form of coercive recruitment is present in many countries of Latin America, parts 

of the Caribbean and elsewhere. Around the world, domestic workers are trapped 

in situations of forced labor, with some restrained from leaving their employer’s 

home by means of threat or actual violence. Bonded labor persists in South Asia 

where millions of men, women, and children are tied to their work through a vicious 

cycle of debt. In Europe and North America, an increasing number of women and 

children are victims of traffickers who sell them into forced prostitution or sweatshops. Finally, forced labor is sometimes still imposed as a punishment for expressing one’s political views. 

The ILO estimates that there are at least 12.3 million persons in forced labor 

today. Globally, only 20 percent of all forced labor is exacted by the State or armed 

forces. Eighty percent of forced laborers or 9.8 million people were exploited by private agents. Of this majority, 11 percent is exacted for forced commercial sexual exploitation, while 64 percent is exacted for the purpose of economic exploitation. Reliable statistical information about the economic sectors where forced labor is found 

remains difficult to establish. Most victims are poverty-stricken people in Asia and 
53 

Latin America, whose vulnerability is exploited by others for a profit. Yet, over 

360,000 women and men [3 percent of the total] are in forced labor in industrialized 

countries, trafficked for either labor or sexual exploitation. Some 56 percent of all 

persons in forced labor are women and girls. Children under 18 years of age make 

up between 40–50 percent of forced laborers. 

The ILO is actively focused on people within contract labor and recruitment systems and domestic workers. The ILO has taken up the issue of protecting domestic 

workers vigorously. Last year, the ILO International Labor Conference [ILC] began 

consideration of a Domestic Worker’s Convention. It is expected to receive the second round and final consideration and a formal vote during the meeting of the 100th 

ILO ILC this June. The U.S. has been an important leader on protecting domestic 

workers. We appreciate U.S. support for the convention and we welcomed the April 

2011 statement made by the U.S. mission in response to the OSCE Report on 

Human Trafficking. 

ILO LABOR STANDARDS

One principal responsibility of the ILO is drawing up and overseeing international 

labor standards. Since 1919, the member countries, employers and workers that 

make up the tripartite structure of the ILO have developed and maintained a system of international labor standards aimed at promoting opportunities for women 

and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity. Strong enforcement of labor standards worldwide levels the playing field for all workers, including American workers and industries. In today’s 

globalized economy, international labor standards are also an essential component 

for ensuring that the growth of the global economy provides benefits to all. 

The ILO has pioneered the development of international standards prohibiting 

forced labor and for the governance of labor migration and protection of migrant 

workers since the 1930s. Universal human rights are applicable to all human beings 

irrespective of nationality. Moreover, the core labor rights—in the eight Conventions 

of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work [1998]—are 

applicable to all workers including all migrant workers. Two of the eight core conventions [C. 29 [1930] & C. 105 [1957]] prohibit all forms of forced or compulsory 

labor and prohibit forced or compulsory labor as a means of political coercion or education or as a punishment for holding or expressing political views or views ideologically opposed to the established political, social or economic system; as a method of 

mobilizing and using labor for purposes of economic development; as a means of 

labor discipline; as a punishment for having participated in strikes; and as a means 

of racial, social, national or religious discrimination. Additionally, forced or compulsory labor is considered to be one of the worst forms of child labor in the Worst 

Forms of Child Labor Convention No. 182 [1999]. 

The ILO Conventions on migrant workers—Migration for Employment No. 97, 

[1949] and the Migrant Workers [Supplementary Provisions] Convention No. 143, 

[1975] define the rights of migrant workers, and advocate the principles of equal 

treatment, equality of opportunity and non-discrimination. The 1990 UN 

Internatinoal Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers 

and Members of their Families has elaborated and expanded on these rights. These 

three Conventions together define a comprehensive charter of migrant rights and 

provide a legal basis for national policy and practice on migrant workers. 

Member States of the OSCE have made significant commitments to International 

Labor Standards relevant to forced labor and migration. The vast majority of OSCE 

states have ratified the Conventions prohibiting all forms of forced labor. Additionally, 93 percent have ratified Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor. Regarding migration, the record of ratifications is lower: only 20 OSCE countries ratified Convention 97 and 14 have ratified Convention 143. 

ILO PROGRAMS

The ILO has two specialized programs—The International Migration Program 

[ILO MIGRANT] and the Special Action Program to combat Forced Labor [SAP–FL] 

to assist ILO countries and partners with the challenges of labor migration and 

forced labor. 

The ILO Governing Body created the Special Action Program to combat Forced 

Labor in November 2001 as part of broader efforts to promote the 1998 Declaration 

on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up. The ILO is promoting a Global Alliance with partner agencies pooling their efforts to eliminate 

forced labor worldwide by 2015. 

ILO’s International Migration Program supports effective practices by the ILO 

member States in combating discrimination against migrants and in helping their 
54 

2See, for example, Trafficking For Forced Labor—How To Monitor The Recruitment of Migrant Workers [2006]; Forced Labor and Human Trafficking: Handbook for Labor Inspectors 

[2008]; Handbook for Employers & Businesses [2008]. 

social and economic integration. The program is currently implementing the Plan 

of Action of 2004 which consists of seven components, including a Multilateral 

Framework, promoting the application of international labor standards, strengthening social dialogue, technical assistance for capacity building, and supporting the 

ILO global employment agenda at national levels. The Multilateral Framework provides non-binding principles and guidelines to assist countries in developing more 

effective labor migration policies and includes a set of best practices. Currently the 

program is engaged in 14 technical cooperation projects either funded by or to be 

implemented in OSCE countries, to develop effective migration systems, policies, 

and strategies; strengthening pertinent government institutions, and educating migrants on their rights and available services 

The ILO has been at the forefront of generating and sharing data and knowledge 

on these topics, to raise public awareness and increase pressure for action. ILO’s 

initial body of research was seminal as it has provided the basic facts and figures 

on modern forced labor, raising the global pressure for policy change. The ILO has 

continued to expand the global knowledge base on forced labor, for example commissioning focused studies in methodologically challenging and politically sensitive 

areas. I would like to emphasize that improving data collection on these issues is of 

paramount importance. Significant gaps in understanding the quantitative dimension of forced labor and human trafficking remain. The few available national estimates are generally calculated on the basis of secondary data. The ILO is working 

with governments to improve indicators and data collection on forced labor and 

human trafficking to promote better enforcement and monitor the impact of national 

and international policies. 

The ILO has developed and disseminated courses, guidance and training materials on key aspects of forced labor and trafficking. For example, a regular course 

on labor migration was launched in 2007 at ILO’s training center in Turin, Italy. 

In July 2011 the Labor Migration Academy will provide advanced knowledge and 

enhance the capacity of key migration actors to better understand labor migration 

challenges and opportunities. A set of handbooks and training manuals for recruiters, labor inspectors, businesses have been developed to provide guidance and strategies about forced labor.2

Cooperation between the OSCE and the ILO on research and training has helped 

our economic partners to access important knowledge and expertise on these topics. 

For example, a number of migration handbooks have been jointly developed to assist 

countries in their efforts to develop new policy approaches, solutions and practical 

measures for better management of labor migration in countries of origin and of 

destination. Training projects were organized in 2010 focusing on gender aspects in 

labor migration policies. Last week, ILO participated in a two-day OSCE conference 

in Tbilisi, Georgia focusing on building partnerships to combat human trafficking 

and forced labor as part of a European Union-funded regional anti-trafficking 

project in the South Caucasus. In June 2011, ILO will participate in the Alliance 

Against Trafficking in Persons meeting in Vienna, Austria—an international forum 

which aims at combining the efforts of the stakeholders to prevent and combat 

human trafficking. 

The ILO assists governments in designing and implementing projects on the 

ground. Through our Decent Work country program strategies, the ILO works with 

employers, workers and governments to set out agreed national priorities in the 

world of work. Experience shows that, with careful awareness-raising, consensus 

can be built to include sensitive subjects, such as forced labor, among the core national priorities. Bolivia and Nicaragua are examples of countries which have included the abolition of forced labor as a specific Decent Work Agenda priority. In 

Asia, Pakistan has included a direct commitment on reducing bonded labor. The 

U.S. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons [G/TIP] is providing leadership and grants to eliminate human trafficking globally, support the victims of 

trafficking and to prosecute traffickers. In Turkey, through the ILO’s International 

Program on the Elimination of Child Labor [IPEC], the U.S. Department of Labor 

sponsored a project that withdrew or protected over 13,000 children from the worst 

forms of child labor between 2003 and 2006. 

In Brazil, the ILO has been working with our social partners on the issue of 

forced labor in global supply chains. In many sectors, enterprises outsource a range 

of production and service-related activities which results in complex international 

supply chains. The growth of supply chains and outsourcing has raised issues sur-
55 

rounding the application of international labor standards on suppliers. The abolition 

of ‘‘slave labor’’ and the worst forms of child labor are a key priority in Brazil’s ‘‘National Agenda for Decent Work’’. With grant support from the Bureau of Democracy, 

Human Rights, and Labor [DRL] of the State Department, the project ‘‘Eradicating 

Forced Labor from Global Supply Chains through Social Dialogue’’ [2005–2011] has 

promoted new understanding and strategies for engagement. The key objective is to 

strengthen the Global Alliance Against Forced Labor by reducing risks of trafficking 

and forced labor facing Brazilian suppliers and international buyers. The public and 

private sector efforts in Brazil have helped to raise awareness about forced labor, 

mobilize companies, rescue thousands of forced laborers, and map complex supply 

chains in a range of industries. 

CONCLUSIONS

I want to leave the Commission with three key points: 

One—Good migration polices and the abolition of forced labor are challenges for 

every country—whether industrialized, emerging economies or less developed. The 

ILO is playing a critical role in assisting countries to bring decent working conditions to citizens and migrants alike, and ending forced labor and trafficking. However, we believe that true gains in the governance of migration, and against forced 

labor and human trafficking must happen in a multilateral context. By definition, 

international migration and human trafficking require common approaches and 

means for cooperation among States. 

Two, the ILO takes a rights-based approach to these issues. The ILO is devoted 

to promoting social justice and internationally recognized human and labor rights, 

pursuing its founding mission that labor peace is essential to prosperity. Basic 

human rights, including core labor rights of all workers, both men and women, and 

children, migrants and other vulnerable workers should be respected. 

Three, governance of migration and forced labor deserves a multi-stakeholder approach. The ILO works with governments and strong social partners in devising innovative and sustainable solutions to these issues. Cooperation between the economic partners—government, employers and workers is critical to reducing irregular migration and ending forced labor and ensuring protection of workers’ rights. 

We at the ILO have enjoyed fruitful partnerships with G/TIP and DRL at the U.S. 

Department of State, and with the Bureau of International Labor Affairs within the 

U.S. Department of Labor while working on these important issues. We respect and 

seek more ways to work with the outstanding initiatives of the Solidarity Center. 

We are dedicated to continue working together to improve migrants’ conditions and 

to end forced labor and human trafficking around the world. 

Thank you once again for inviting me to participate in this hearing, Chairman 

Smith, Co-Chairman Cardin and distinguished Members of the Commission. I am 

happy to answer any questions you may have. 
56 

1The term ‘‘migrant worker’’ is the internationally accepted term for a person who migrates 

for employment, whether temporary, seasonal, or permanent. In the United States, in everyday 

language, ‘‘migrant worker’’ refers to a seasonal or temporary worker, and ‘‘immigrant worker’’ 

refers to someone who migrates for work on a more permanent basis, or who has residency 

rights. I will use the common U.S. term of ‘‘immigrant worker’’ in my testimony modifying it 

slightly to refer to any person who leaves his or her country of origin to find a job abroad— 

whether temporary, seasonal or permanent. 2 Editorial, ‘‘Forced Labor,’’ September 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/opinion/ 

08wed2.html?lr=2 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NEHA MISRA, SENIOR SPECIALIST, MIGRATION AND HUMAN

TRAFFICKING, SOLIDARITY CENTER

‘‘SLAVERY WITHOUT SHACKLES’’: LABOR EXPLOITATION AND THE TRAFFICKING OF

VULNERABLE WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD

Thank you to the U.S. Helsinki commission for the opportunity to present the Solidarity Center’s view about ‘‘labor trafficking in troubled economic times’’, and especially to highlight the vulnerability of immigrant workers 1 to trafficking and forced 

labor within legal structures in the U.S. and around the world. 

My name is Neha Misra. I am the Senior Specialist for Migration and Human 

Trafficking at the Solidarity Center. We are an international NGO that promotes 

and protects worker rights globally, working in over 60 countries. The Solidarity 

Center is an allied organization of the American Federation of Labor—Congress of 

Industrial Organizations [AFL–CIO], and a member of the Alliance to End Slavery 

and Trafficking [ATEST]. Building upon more than 20 years of experience in the 

areas of child labor and immigrant worker exploitation, the Solidarity Center raises 

awareness about the prevalence and underlying causes of trafficking for labor exploitation, and strives to unite disparate forces to combat the problem. Since 2001, 

the Solidarity Center has implemented more than 20 programs combating human 

trafficking in countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Kenya, and the Dominican Republic. 

These programs include initiatives that address each of the four ‘‘Ps’’ that have become part of the anti-trafficking paradigm: prevention, protection of victims, prosecution [or as we prefer to describe it, ‘‘rule of law’’], and partnerships. 

TRAFFICKING FOR LABOR EXPLOITATION IN TODAY’S GLOBAL ECONOMY

The Solidarity Center especially appreciates the Helsinki Commission’s focus in 

this hearing on trafficking for labor exploitation and the focus on ‘‘abusive, unethical, and illegal business practices that . . . contribute to human trafficking and 

forced labor.’’ As a worker rights organization, the Solidarity Center has seen firsthand how violations of worker rights and the lack of labor standards and protections 

for workers increase their vulnerability to human trafficking. 

Too often the media and the public see human trafficking only as a crime of organized syndicates, of criminal gangs, or underground criminals who exploit undocumented immigrant workers. While this is of course true in some contexts, we are 

increasingly seeing trafficking for labor exploitation happening in the context of 

legal structures of employment and business—with traffickers who are employers 

and labor recruiters, not gang members. 

Examples abound around the world of human trafficking thriving in the context 

of worker exploitation: 

• When immigrant workers are forced to pay high fees, often at exorbitant interest rates, to labor recruiters to work in another country, they are vulnerable to debt 

bondage—one of the most pervasive forms of modern day slavery. This is the case 

for 400 Thai workers who, according to a U.S. Department of Justice indictment, 

were allegedly trafficked to the United States by Global Horizons Manpower under 

the H–2A visa program through false promises of decent work. The Thai workers 

‘‘took on crushing debt to pay exorbitant recruiting fees, about $9,500–$21,000. After 

they arrived in America, according to the indictment, their passports were taken 

and they were set up in shoddy housing and told that if they complained or fled 

they would be fired, arrested or deported.’’ 2 Millions of other workers—including for 

example, Moldovan migrant agriculture workers in Italy and Vietnamese workers 

toiling in factories in Malaysia—can tell a similar story. 

• When buyers pressure suppliers all along supply chains to achieve cutthroat 

prices for their products, workers are the ones that bear the burden as labor costs 

are often the first ones to be cut, increasing workers vulnerability to severe forms 

of labor exploitation, including human trafficking. This is the case for thousands of 

Burmese migrant workers who have been subject to forced labor and physical, emo-
57 

3The term ‘‘domestic worker’’ refers to a person who provides services—such as childcare, 

cooking, and cleaning—to or within a household. 4 ATEST Comments on RIN 1205–AB58, Temporary Non-Agricultural Employment of H–2B 

Aliens in the United States [Employment and Training Administration, 20 CFR Part 655 and 

Wage and Hour Division, 29 CFR Part 503], May 17, 2011. 5Southern Poverty Law Center, 2007. ‘‘Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United 

States,’’ http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/static/SPLCguestworker.pdf; Closed and Criminal Cases Illustrate Instances of H–2B Workers Being Targets of Fraud and Abuse, GAO 10–1053; testimony submitted by members of the Guestworker Alliance for Dignity to the House Committee 

Continued 

tional, and sexual intimidation in seafood-processing factories in Thailand, which 

export to the United States. The factories rely on trafficked workers to stay within 

the cost structure. • When labor laws and regulations are not implemented, monitored, or enforced—when labor inspection is weak or nonexistent—workers are vulnerable to 

trafficking for forced labor and other forms of severe labor exploitation. When workers face retaliation for trying to exercise their rights or when workers lack access 

to avenues to address abuse, workers are vulnerable to human trafficking. This is 

the case for millions of domestic workers,3 agricultural workers, and immigrant 

workers in the United States and around the world who face extreme conditions of 

exploitation, including physical and sexual violence, confiscation of passports, illegal 

confinement, dangerous working conditions, and non-payment of wages. These workers are often explicitly excluded from the protection of labor laws, even when they 

are citizens or nationals of a country, and their work is often relegated to the informal economy where there is little labor inspection. 

In 2011, a slave may not be in chains or shackles, but they are no freer. Slavery 

is not simply ownership of one person over another. Modern day slavery is much 

more subtle. Trafficking victims toil in factories that produce products that are exported to the United States, Europe, and other destinations. Trafficking victims harvest vegetables and process food that ends up on our dining room tables. They pick 

crops or mine minerals that are raw materials in the products we buy. They make 

the clothes and shoes we wear. They clean people’s homes and take care of the 

young, elderly and sick. They are enslaved not only through physical restraint, but 

also through coercion, fear, and intimidation. In today’s global economy, workers can 

be enslaved by threats of deportation, lack of viable alternatives, and especially 

debt. 

While trafficking for labor exploitation has many facets, several major trends in 

our globalized world endanger workers, particularly those most at risk and most in 

need of protection. In developed economies like in the United States and Europe, 

we are seeing an increase in cases of trafficked immigrant teachers, nurses, construction, and service sector workers—all in these destination countries with valid 

visas, shining a light on the structural failures within our economic and employment systems that increase immigrant workers’ vulnerability to severe forms of 

labor exploitation. Multinational corporations, employers, businesses, labor recruiters and others exploit these failures. 

TRAFFICKING AS AN INHERENT VULNERABILITY IN TEMPORARY LABOR MIGRATION

SCHEMES

Of particular concern are temporary labor migration schemes—sometimes referred 

to as guestworker, sponsorship or circular migration programs—that are increasingly being promoted by governments around the world to fill demand for cheap 

labor. In practice, these schemes create a legalized system and structure for employers to exploit workers, and increase workers’ vulnerability to human trafficking and 

other forms of severe labor exploitation. Such programs have been plagued by a long 

history of abuses ranging from labor violations to visa fraud, debt bondage, involuntary servitude and trafficking for labor exploitation. This includes, among many others, the U.S. H–2 visa guestworker program, seasonal agricultural programs in Canada and Europe, and the ‘‘kafala’’ or sponsorship system in the Gulf Cooperation 

Council [GCC] countries. 

The Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking or ATEST, of which the Solidarity 

Center is a member, recently described the problem in a submission to the U.S. Department of Labor as follows:4

It is by now beyond dispute that temporary ‘‘guestworker’’ programs have 

long worked to the detriment both o f the U.S. workers who are bypassed 

in favor of foreign workers, and for the foreign workers who fall prey to unscrupulous employers and their labor contractors.5 Of particular concern to 
58 

on Oversight and Governmental Reform Domestic Policy Subcommittee, ‘‘The H–2B Program 

and Improving the Department of Labor’s Enforcement of the Rights of Guestworkers,’’ April 

9, 2009; The Costs of Coercion: Global Report under the Follow Up to the ILO Declaration of 

the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, International Labor Organization, International Labor Conference, 98th Sess. 2009 Report I [B], http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---edlnorm/---relconf/documents/meetingdocument/wcmsl106230.pdf. 

our members, key aspects of the program lead to human rights violations 

such as debt peonage [or debt bondage], trafficking for labor exploitation 

and involuntary servitude, all forms of modern-day slavery. Guestworkers’ 

vulnerability is greatly increased by the use of labor recruiters or foreign 

labor contractors who lure impoverished and desperate foreign workers to 

jobs within the United States described as plentiful and lucrative. The opportunity to work in the U.S. comes with an intolerably high price tag that 

includes inflated transportation, visa, border crossing and other costs, and 

‘‘recruitment fees.’’ Often, workers literally mortgage family properties or 

take out loans from loan sharks at exorbitant rates in order to meet these 

obligations. Companies within the United States claim no knowledge of 

their recruiters’ actions and escape legal liability on these grounds. The recruiters themselves often remain beyond the reach of the U.S. legal system. 

Once guestworkers arrive in the United States, the well-paid jobs that 

have been offered [often] do not materialize. Workers are left without work 

at all, or without work for the length of time promised them. Favorable 

terms and conditions of work offered in the home country are replaced by 

harsh conditions. Job contractors transfer workers, for a price, to other contractors. Workers who are dissatisfied with the jobs face overwhelming subtle and not-so-subtle pressures to acquiesce. Passports and other immigration and identity documents are confiscated [by employers] to ensure that 

workers do not run away. Families back home are threatened [by recruiters] with physical violence, as well as family bankruptcy due to loss of their 

investment in the worker. Workers who dare speak up for their rights face 

job loss, followed by deportation to their home countries and blacklisting. 

These factors lead workers to fall into myriad situations that rise to the 

level of a severe form of human trafficking, most notably coercion through 

abuse or threatened abuse of the law or legal process. 

As noted in a recent ILO report, these conditions create a program that 

is ripe for human rights violations. Human trafficking abuses involving H– 

2B visas have been documented with frequency in recent media. 

While the description above refers to the U.S. temporary guestworker program, 

the same scenario repeats itself around the world—for example, in Canada, Europe, 

the GCC, and around Asia. The common element is that these workers are trafficked within legal visa systems, fully documented, and that structural flaws within 

these programs allow workers to be trafficked. 

Two other major common themes emerge: 

1. The role of foreign labor recruiters in taking advantage of the lack of labor 

rights and inherent structural failures in these programs to exploit immigrant workers; and, 

2. The need to provide greater protections to workers and opportunities for them 

to report abuses and advocate for their own rights. 

THE ROLE OF LABOR RECRUITERS IN PROMOTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Foreign labor contractors or recruiters are increasingly relied upon by employers, 

businesses, and multi-national corporations to facilitate the movement of labor from 

one country to another. While many labor recruiters behave ethically and are engaged in lawful conduct, other recruiters are often complicit with or directly involved in trafficking of workers. Recruiters often charge exorbitant fees for their 

services, forcing workers into debt bondage, falsifying documents, and deceiving 

workers about their terms and conditions of work increasing vulnerability to human 

trafficking. 

The incidence of known human trafficking cases involving foreign labor recruiters 

is increasing dramatically in the United States. The aforementioned Global Horizons case and the Signal workers case are just two recent examples. Many U.S.- 

based service providers state that regulating labor recruiters is one of the most important initiatives needed to combat human trafficking in the United States—both 

labor recruiters based in the U.S. and abroad. Employers rely on labor recruiters 

who have operations both in the U.S. and in foreign countries—as they use a system 
59 

of subcontracting to find workers. The operations of such recruiters need to be regulated on both ends of the spectrum. 

Stricter regulation of labor recruiters is needed to protect workers entering the 

United States from human trafficking and other abuses such as wage theft. Stronger legal frameworks will help to prevent unregulated actors from conspiring to 

fraudulently deceive workers about the terms and conditions of work. 

To that end, ATEST has made a series of recommendations to include regulation 

of labor recruiters/foreign labor contractors in the 2011 Reauthorization of the Trafficking Victim Protection Act [TVPRA 2011]. Similar provisions were passed in the 

2008 House of Representatives version of the TVPRA. We have learned even more 

since 2008 about the need for greater regulation of foreign labor recruiters. As such, 

ATEST recommends, with the support of a number of worker and immigrant rights 

groups in the United States, the following for inclusion in the 2011 TVPRA: 

1. Elimination of Fees: No foreign labor contractor, or agent or employee of a foreign labor contractor, should be allowed to assess any fee [including visa fees, processing fees, transportation fees, legal expenses, placement fees, and other costs] to 

a worker for any foreign labor contracting activity. Such costs or fees may be borne 

by the employer, but these fees cannot be passed along to the worker. This is one 

of the most crucial elements to eliminate debt bondage for immigrant workers. 

2. Disclosure: Foreign labor contractors and employers must be required to fully 

disclose to the worker in writing in English and in the language of the worker being 

recruited, all of the terms and conditions of their work. This includes: 

• The identity of the employer and the identity of the person conducting the recruiting on behalf of the employer, including any subcontractor or agent involved 

in such recruiting. 

• A signed copy of the work contract, including all assurances and terms and 

conditions of employment, from the prospective employer for whom the worker is 

being recruited, including the level of compensation to be paid, the place and period 

of employment, a description of the type and nature of employment activities, any 

withholdings or deductions from compensation and any penalties for terminating 

employment. 

• The type of visa under which the foreign worker is to be employed, the length 

of time the visa is valid and the terms and conditions under which this visa will 

be renewed with a clear statement of whether the employer will secure renewal of 

this visa or if renewal must be obtained by the worker and any expenses associated 

with securing or renewing the visa. 

• An itemized list of any costs or expenses to be charged to the worker. Including 

but not limited to: the costs of housing or accommodation, transportation to and 

from the worksite, meals, medical examinations, healthcare or safety equipment 

costs, and any other costs, expenses or deductions to be charged the worker. 

• A statement describing the protections afforded the worker by U.S laws and 

regulations, including protections in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 

[Division A of the Public Law 106–486], as well as relevant information about the 

procedure for filing a complaint and the telephone numbers for the Department of 

Labor hotline and the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline number. 

3. Registration: A Department of Labor administered process for foreign labor contractors to obtain a certificate of registration. Employers must be required to use 

only foreign labor contractors who are properly registered under this system. 

4. Enforcement: A Department of Labor established administrative process for receiving, investigating, and adjudicating complaints against the compliance of either 

employers or foreign labor contractors. Criminal and civil rights of action for workers themselves are also key to preventing trafficking. 

5. Accountability: Workers must be protected from retaliation and employers must 

be held accountable for the actions of foreign labor contractors that they hire. 

WORKER RIGHTS AS A MEANS TO PREVENT TRAFFICKING FOR LABOR EXPLOITATION

As described earlier, immigrant workers must be included fully in the protection 

of labor laws and have access to mechanisms to exercise their rights and report 

abuses to reduce their vulnerability to trafficking. Threats of retaliation, deportation, and visas being tied to a particular employer all increase the incidence of trafficking for labor exploitation. For this reason, ATEST also recommends a provision 

for the 2011 TVPRA that provide temporary immigration relief to workers who are 

whistleblowers of severe labor exploitation. There have been a number of human 

trafficking cases recently in the United States where workers who raised the alarm 

about severe abuse by employers have initially been threatened with deportation as 

a way to keep them quiet. These workers have had to remain in the United States 

in an undocumented status in order to stay in the country to pursue their cases 
60 

against the abusive employers. After many years, these same workers have been 

certified as trafficking victims and receive ‘‘T’’ visas, but had to struggle for many 

years without status. Examples of this include the Global Horizons case and a group 

of Indian workers known in the media as the Signal Workers. ATEST recommends 

that a provision be included in the TVPRA 2011 to give trafficked workers like these 

access to temporary immigration relief in the United States while they pursue 

claims here, even if they are not initially identified as trafficking victims. 

TRAFFICKING IN SUPPLY CHAINS

Another major trend in the global economy is the use of trafficking, forced labor, 

and slavery victims all along supply chains. It is difficult to quantify the exact number of trafficking victims who work in global supply chains but, as those supply 

chains reach down to smaller and smaller suppliers, the chances increase that the 

labor force includes trafficked people. 

• When employers [buyers and multinational corporations [MNCs]] demand 

cheap or unrealistic pricing structures, they should not be surprised to find severe 

labor abuses, including slavery, in their supply chains. 

• Similarly, when employers contract out or hire unregulated subcontracted suppliers, they should not be surprised to find that they have trafficking victims in 

their production lines 

• When employers refuse to enforce or claim that it is too difficult to monitor 

adherence to core labor standards in their supply chains, they will find forced labor, 

debt bondage, and other severe forms of labor exploitation there. 

The Solidarity Center believes that the most effective way to eliminate forced 

labor, debt bondage and other forms of slavery in supply chains is by empowering 

workers to have a voice in their workplace, and supporting their right to organize 

and join unions. We believe that governments, MNCs, employers, labor recruiters 

and others must adhere to core labor standards and respect workers’ human and 

labor rights in order to affect change in practices all along supply chains. 

The existence of MNC codes of conduct have failed to curtail trafficking practices 

in any number of sectors including garment/textile, agriculture, and seafood processing. There is no easy solution to this problem, but we know that a key deterrent 

is the ability of unions and labor rights organizations to shine a light on these practices through on-the-ground investigations. We believe it is important that the Congress and Administration support such monitoring efforts, and the efforts of workers 

to monitor their own workplaces. Ultimately, workers and trade unions must be empowered to monitor supply chains because history shows that abuses in the workplace only end when workers have the power to ensure that their rights in both 

International Labor Organization [ILO] conventions and national laws are respected. 

Governments must also play a major role in eliminating slavery in supply chains. 

Examples abound of governments around the world reluctance to hold employers accountable for trafficking in their workplaces. Even when trafficking for labor exploitation is addressed, the labor recruiter is blamed and not the employer who perpetrates the exploitation. 

This lack of political will translates into ridiculously few cases of human trafficking for forced labor or other forms of severe labor exploitation from being prosecuted around the world. When cases are prosecuted, they often result in small fines 

and no jail time for the perpetrators—barely a deterrent for exploitative employers. 

The U.S. Department of Justice is playing an important leadership role globally, by 

prosecuting high-profile cases, such as the Global Horizons case, that may educate 

other governments of trafficking of temporary workers and within supply chains. 

The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons [G/TIP] at the State Department also plays an important role through its annual Trafficking in Persons Report in highlighting the lack of [but need for] prosecutions for forced labor and other 

forms of trafficking for labor exploitation in countries around the world. 

The U.S. government, however, must do more to ensure that U.S. corporations are 

held accountable for their practices abroad. We must increase government scrutiny 

of imports and exports to ensure goods made by slave labor are not allowed in the 

U.S. marketplace. To this end, the State Department needs to put more emphasis 

on site visits overseas to suspect industries. To do this, it must expand the number 

of labor officers and attache ́s in the field, something that the Congress has called 

for generally but which the Department has yet to act upon in any meaningful way. 

In addition, the Department of Homeland Security must review and rework the 

role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] in overseas inspections. Currently, ICE must notify foreign governments of their intent to inspect workplaces 

that export products to the United States. Such notification results in the ‘‘cleans-
61 

ing’’ of these workplaces to remove any signs of trafficking or forced labor. U.S. law 

does not allow evidence collected by unions or non-governmental sources to be the 

basis for restricting the importation of products made by slave labor. This must be 

reformed. 

CONCLUSION

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, in the opening of the 2010 TIP Report, 

‘‘Ending this global scourge is an important policy priority for the United States 

. . . and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility 

to confront it.’’ 

We agree. It is not an oversimplification to say that if we end worker exploitation, 

we can end human trafficking. As the International Labor Organization [ILO] has 

noted, ‘‘Where labor standards are rigorously adhered to, workers are well unionized 

and labor laws are monitored and enforced—for all workers, indigenous or migrant—the demand for trafficked people and services is likely to be low.’’ 

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to testify and for your help in combating 

global trafficking and supporting the rights of workers everywhere. I welcome your 

questions. 
62 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JULIA ORMOND, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, THE ALLIANCE

TO STOP SLAVERY AND END TRAFFICKING

Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members of the Committee and staff, good morning. 

Initially, I engaged around the issue of slavery and human trafficking shocked 

and spurred into action by reports of sex-trafficking. To me, nothing then seemed 

more heinous than the repeated rape and violence endured by its victims. 

At first, I met in California with survivors representing a wide variety of the faces 

of slavery. Other travels around the world took me to Russia, Ghana, Thailand, 

Cambodia, India, and Europe. These trips provided me with a creepy and shocking 

perspective of how slavery invades not merely the lives of its victims, but my own 

life as well—how I am unwittingly connected to it; ultimately connected to its systematic violence. People often ask me ‘‘where in the world is it worst?’’ My answer 

is: ‘‘in my own home’’ 

It is simply not possible to sit easily in Los Angeles and forget the enslaved children I have met. Children from whom I have walked away, and left to an uncertain 

fate. 

What keeps me up at night—what haunts me—are the victim’s stories. I will 

never forget the story of the girl who crawled out of an eight floor window for fear 

of her life in sex slavery. But I can equally never forget the child enslaved in the 

fishing industry who jumped ship into the Thai sea to float on a barrel for two days 

and a night before being rescued because that was his safest option, or the child 

who was chained, whipped and scarred for life while maybe working on our carpets. 

Or the child soldier forced to burn his village, kill his mother and rape his sister 

for someone else’s war. Or the stories of the artisanal miners of gold who begin a 

two-year life expectancies, just to provide me with a trinket. Or the enslaved garment worker who make my clothing. Or footage of Mayan agricultural slaves in 

Florida picking my tomatoes. 

Just as those forced into sex slavery, they all deserve our compassion. They all 

deserve our attention. And they all deserve our commitment to end all forms of slavery and human trafficking. 

In 2007 I founded the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking, otherwise 

known as ASSET. ASSET is an advocacy organization, dedicated to combating slavery and trafficking by amplifying the voice of the victim, and supporting systemic 

solutions. 

I have come to define ‘‘enslavement’’ as: 

‘‘When one person completely controls another person, uses violence or violent threat to maintain that control, exploits them economically and pays 

them effectively nothing. Trafficking is a process of enslaving someone.’’ 

Under the tenure of Ambassador CdeBaca, the 2010 Annual Report of the U.S. 

State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons notes that 

more people are trafficked into forced labor than commercial sex. Yet ask any member of the public what proportion of this issue is sex-trafficking, and the usual response is about 80%. To the contrary, the International Labor Organization has recently stated that for every one person forced into the sex trade, nine people around 

the world are forced to work. 

And among labor trafficking victims, the practice is most prevalent in the agriculture and mining industries. The forced labor of these victims taints many of the 

products that we purchase and rely on every day, such as coffee, chocolate, clothing, 

micro-chips, electronics, even the brake pads in our cars. To quote the TIP Report, 

‘‘it is impossible to get dressed, drive to work, talk on the phone, or eat a meal without touching products tainted by forced labor.’’ 

The United Nations has documented the shift from trafficking in weapons and 

drugs, to trafficking in people. And now specifically, the trafficking of children. The 

U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime has cited that in Europe, the profits from human 

trafficking has overtaken the profits in the trafficking of drugs. Yet the United 

States government spends more in ONE DAY fighting the war on drugs, than it 

spends in an entire year fighting the trafficking of people. 

We all have a role to play in supporting solutions—and there are many solutions. 

Every single place I travelled, solutions await the resources to scale and meet a 

drastic need. 

In order to resource these solutions, however, it is vital to get the story straight, 

and media can play a crucial role. Sex will always sell, whether the story is good 

or bad. But we need the media to cover the issue fairly, proportionately. Media outlets must set aside deliberate resistance of losing advertising revenue, and instead 

articulate how businesses can use their influence over supply chains to recreate the 
63 

map, to illuminate the worst areas of poverty in the world, where slavery and trafficking take hold. 

As advocates, we need to do a better job articulating to the public the enormous 

challenges that today’s complex supply chains present to business. We need to articulate that the CEO is most often not the criminal. This is criminal activity tainting their supply chains, most often around raw materials, just as shoplifting is 

criminal activity occurring at the other end of the supply chain, at the point of purchase. 

Only by rediscovering the supply chain, and influencing each step of it by encouraging best practices, can we implement real solutions; can the NGO work with the 

CEO. A supply chain without a policy of best practices is like a computer without 

virus protection—you will most likely become infected with a virus or tainted by 

labor violations. 

We need companies to come to the table and collaborate in finding better solutions, to work with governments and the NGO community, who can offer victims 

safety and rehabilitation, and can assist vulnerable communities. We cannot accurately and efficiently access victims without the assistance of the companies that influence infected supply chains. 

I think one of the most crucial pieces that I have learnt is that this is a 

verification of process—whether you are growing, picking, selling tomatoes out of 

Florida, or implementing Fair Trade’s exemplary standards in the developing worlds 

small farms—you will find slavery. The point is that the better your practices, the 

less you will find. And the better your practices, the better your response. 

ASSET’s solution was to be primary sponsor of the California Transparency in 

Supply Chains Act of 2010, authored by Senator Darrell Steinberg and signed into 

law by Governor Schwarzenegger in September 2010. 

This law came into effect in January 2011, and it requires retailers and manufacturers operating in California with over $100 million in worldwide gross receipts to 

publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their 

supply chains. The law will apply to just over 3,000 companies—around 4% of California’s companies, who represent approximately 87% of economic activity in the 

state. 

This new law is one small step in a long journey forged by others that ASSET 

has joined. I hope if it is applied well, that it will represent a watershed in the sharing of knowledge, and will enable active consumer, investor and other stake-holder 

engagement, will encourage a pooling of resources and will get us closer to concrete, 

measurable results. 

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act will for the first time enable 

consumers to chose to support businesses that are creating best practices, using 

their purchasing power to encourage them to bring their expertise and knowledge 

of supply chains into the equation. Investors can influence corporate governance and 

social responsibility practices, providing incentives to companies to elevate human 

rights and place them at the heart of their strategy. 

In one sweep it will educate companies unaware of a possible problem not just 

of their own potential vulnerability, but also the devastating impact of using company influence to drive profit up by forcing the prices of raw materials down, to a 

level where labor violations and criminal activity and suicide are the outcome for 

the raw material work-force. For today’s enslaved. 

It will create an environment where those companies already doing the right 

thing, can more robustly and publically turn it into part of their brand identity. And 

for the next step in the process to occur; Congress should enact federal legislation 

that will empower consumers with information disclosing the presence of slavery 

and trafficking in the corporate supply chain. 

Thank you for listening, and I look forward to your questions. 

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