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[Congressional Bills 114th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 400 Introduced in House (IH)]

114th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 400

 To require the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United 
   States Agency for International Development to submit reports on 
definitions of placement and recruitment fees for purposes of enabling 
compliance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and for 
                            other purposes.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            January 16, 2015

 Mr. Royce (for himself and Mr. Engel) introduced the following bill; 
         which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL

 
 To require the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United 
   States Agency for International Development to submit reports on 
definitions of placement and recruitment fees for purposes of enabling 
compliance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and for 
                            other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This bill may be referred to as the ``Trafficking Prevention in 
Foreign Affairs Contracting Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) The Department of State and the United States Agency 
        for International Development (USAID) rely on contractors to 
        provide various services in foreign countries such as 
        construction, security, and facilities maintenance.
            (2) In certain cases, such as where the employment of local 
        labor is impractical or poses security risks, Department of 
        State and USAID contractors sometimes employ foreign workers 
        who are citizens neither of the United States nor of the host 
        country and are recruited from developing countries where low 
        wages and recruitment methods often make them vulnerable to a 
        variety of trafficking-related abuses.
            (3) A January 2011 report of the Office of the Inspector 
        General for the Department of State, while it found no evidence 
        of direct coercion by contractors, found that a significant 
        majority of their foreign workers in certain Middle East 
        countries reported paying substantial fees to recruiters that, 
        according to the Inspector General, ``effectively resulted in 
        debt bondage at their destinations''. Approximately one-half of 
        the workers were charged recruitment fees equaling more than 
        six months' salary. More than a quarter of the workers reported 
        fees greater than one year's salary and, in some of those 
        cases, fees that could not be paid off in two years, the 
        standard length of a contract.
            (4) A November 2014 report of the United States Government 
        Accountability Office (GAO-15-102) found that the Department of 
        State, USAID, and the Defense Department need to strengthen 
        their oversight of contractors' use of foreign workers in high-
        risk environments in order to better protect against 
        trafficking in persons.
            (5) The GAO report recommended that those agencies should 
        develop more precise definitions of recruitment fees, and that 
        they should better ensure that contracting officials include 
        prevention of trafficking in persons in contract monitoring 
        plans and processes, especially in areas where the risk of 
        trafficking in persons is high.
            (6) Of the three agencies addressed in the GAO report, only 
        the Department of Defense expressly concurred with GAO's 
        definitional recommendation and committed to defining 
        recruitment fees and to incorporating that definition in its 
        acquisition regulations as necessary.
            (7) In formal comments to GAO, the Department of State 
        stated that it forbids the charging of any recruitment fees by 
        contractors, and both the Department of State and USAID noted a 
        proposed Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rule that 
        prohibits charging any recruitment fees to employees.
            (8) However, according to GAO, neither the Department of 
        State nor USAID specifically defines what constitutes a 
        prohibited recruitment fee: ``Contracting officers and agency 
        officials with monitoring responsibilities currently rely on 
        policy and guidance regarding recruitment fees that are 
        ambiguous. Without an explicit definition of the components of 
        recruitment fees, prohibited fees may be renamed and passed on 
        to foreign workers, increasing the risk of debt bondage and 
        other conditions that contribute to trafficking.''.
            (9) GAO found that, although Department of State and USAID 
        guidance requires their respective contracting officials to 
        monitor compliance with trafficking in persons requirements, 
        they did not consistently have specific processes in place to 
        do so in all of the contracts that GAO sampled.

SEC. 3. REPORTS ON DEFINITION OF PLACEMENT AND RECRUITMENT FEES AND 
              ENHANCEMENT OF CONTRACT MONITORING TO PREVENT TRAFFICKING 
              IN PERSONS.

    (a) Department of State Report.--Not later than 180 days after the 
date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall submit 
to the appropriate committees of Congress a report that includes the 
matters described in subsection (c) with respect to the Department of 
State.
    (b) USAID Report.--Not later than 180 days after the date of the 
enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the United States Agency 
for International Development (USAID) shall submit to the appropriate 
committees of Congress a report that includes the matters described in 
subsection (c) with respect to USAID.
    (c) Matters To Be Included.--The matters described in this 
subsection are the following:
            (1) A proposed definition of placement and recruitment fees 
        for purposes of complying with section 106(g)(iv)(IV) of the 
        Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 
        7104(g)(iv)(IV)), including a description of what fee 
        components and amounts are prohibited or are permissible for 
        contractors or their agents to charge workers under such 
        section.
            (2) An explanation of how the definition described in 
        paragraph (1) will be incorporated into grants, contracts, 
        cooperative agreements, and contracting practices, so as to 
        apply to the actions of grantees, subgrantees, contractors, 
        subcontractors, labor recruiters, brokers, or other agents, as 
        specified in section 106(g) of the Trafficking Victims 
        Protection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7104(g)).
            (3) A description of actions taken during the 180-day 
        period preceding the date of submission of the report and 
        planned to be taken during the one-year period following the 
        date of submission of the report to better ensure that 
        officials responsible for grants, contracts, and cooperative 
        agreements and contracting practices include the prevention of 
        trafficking in persons in plans and processes to monitor such 
        grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements and contracting 
        practices, particularly as such agreements and contracting 
        practices relate to areas of the world in which the risk of 
        trafficking in persons is high.
    (d) Appropriate Committees of Congress.--In this section, the term 
``appropriate committees of Congress'' means the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign 
Relations of the Senate.

SEC. 4. DEFINITION.

    In this Act, the term ``trafficking in persons'' has the meaning 
given the term in section 103(9) of the Trafficking Victims Protection 
Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7102(9)).
                                 <all>
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