IIB 
114TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 400 
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
FEBRUARY 2, 2016 
Received; read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations 
AN ACT 
To require the Secretary of State and the Administrator 
of the United States Agency for International Develop-
ment 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. 
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This bill may be referred to as the ‘‘Trafficking Pre-
vention 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 serv-
ices in foreign countries such as construction, secu-
rity, and facilities maintenance. 
(2) In certain cases, such as where the employ-
ment 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 con-
tractors, found that a significant majority of their 
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foreign workers in certain Middle East countries re-
ported paying substantial fees to recruiters that, ac-
cording to the Inspector General, ‘‘effectively re-
sulted in debt bondage at their destinations’’. Ap-
proximately one-half of the workers were charged re-
cruitment fees equaling more than six months’ sal-
ary. 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 traf-
ficking in persons in contract monitoring plans and 
processes, especially in areas where the risk of traf-
ficking in persons is high. 
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(6) Of the 3 agencies addressed in the GAO re-
port, only the Department of Defense expressly con-
curred with GAO’s definitional recommendation and 
committed to defining recruitment fees and to incor-
porating that definition in its acquisition regulations 
as necessary. 
(7) In formal comments to GAO, the Depart-
ment 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 pro-
hibits 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: ‘‘Con-
tracting 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 
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contracting officials to monitor compliance with traf-
ficking in persons requirements, they did not con-
sistently have specific processes in place to do so in 
all of the contracts that GAO sampled. 
SEC. 3. REPORTS ON DEFINITION OF PLACEMENT AND RE-
CRUITMENT FEES AND ENHANCEMENT OF 
CONTRACT MONITORING TO PREVENT TRAF-
FICKING 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 Develop-
ment (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 de-
scribed in this subsection are the following: 
(1) A proposed definition of placement and re-
cruitment fees for purposes of complying with sec-
tion 106(g)(iv)(IV) of the Trafficking Victims Pro-
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tection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7104(g)(iv)(IV)), in-
cluding a description of what fee components and 
amounts are prohibited or are permissible for con-
tractors or their agents to charge workers under 
such section. 
(2) An explanation of how the definition de-
scribed in paragraph (1) will be incorporated into 
grants, contracts, cooperative agreements, and con-
tracting practices, so as to apply to the actions of 
grantees, subgrantees, contractors, subcontractors, 
labor recruiters, brokers, or other agents, as speci-
fied 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 1- 
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 traf-
ficking in persons in plans and processes to monitor 
such grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements 
and contracting practices. 
(d) APPROPRIATE COMMITTEES OF CONGRESS.—In 
this section, the term ‘‘appropriate committees of Con-
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gress’’ 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 Traf-
ficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 
7102(9)). 
Passed the House of Representatives February 1, 
2016. 
Attest: 
KAREN L. HAAS, 
Clerk. 
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