The US’s current anti-trafficking policy, which produces a tangle of finite good and possibly infinite harmful effects, is the product of a very modern twist on the classic ‘bait and switch’ game of law-making. The ‘bait’ of sexual harm—stories of ‘sex slaves’ produced by some advocates and propagated with alacrity by the media and accepted by some US law makers—has permitted a constantly changing ‘switch’, an incoherent spectrum of immigration and criminal law enforcement operating without much critical oversight, let alone public understanding. Laws and practices ostensibly targeting trafficking can either benefit or negatively affect a wide range of domestic and border-crossing workers in vastly different labour sectors, ranging from door-to-door magazine sales, to domestic work, sex work, agricultural work, and construction.
It is my contention that we—including progressive critics of the (American) Trafficking Victim Protection Act or TVPA—know too little about the impacts of state and NGO practices carried out under the ‘switch. ’ All of us, critics and proponents alike, are still talking too much about the ‘bait’: the sex side of anti-trafficking work. Despite the now multi-pronged reach of the TVPA, the public understanding, the press and the vast majority of research and scholarship remains stubbornly focused on the sexual aspects of the practices covered by the crime of ‘trafficking’. When the ‘switch’ occurs—the actual application of the TVPA to non-sexual labour in the U.S.—it goes relatively unnoticed, and relatively un-critiqued.
US press reports on a recent ‘victory’ under the TVPA makes this continued thrall to the sex-side of trafficking clear. In February 2015, five Indian welders and pipefitters employed by Signal International in the US though the H-2B visa program were awarded $14 million in compensatory and punitive damages as victims of ‘labour trafficking’—i.e., through the application of the US anti-trafficking law. They had been promised but denied green cards, held in sub-standard living conditions and inhibited in their movement, among other harms. Over 200 more workers are part of a follow up action, claiming to be similarly situated. A national coalition of groups—including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, the Louisiana Justice Institute and two firms—carried out this campaign and litigation. These groups have made an assessment that the TVPA has some potential to benefit this set of exploited workers.
