by Mary Adams, AWC The Hague
The Palermo Protocol defines Trafficking in Human Beings as:
the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments and benefits to achieve the consent of a person, having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
Common forms of exploitation include forced sex and labor, organ removal, forced begging, child marriages, child soldiering and forced criminality acts.
Education has always been a positive factor in raising awareness and preventing human trafficking. Education is the best defense against poverty. It is the road to the future. But sadly, this road has a new barrier. A recent news story shocked and outraged me because of the apparent criminal intent inside the American education system.
Imagine that you are a student living in South America. You are given an opportunity to study at an American academic institution that will fulfill the educational objectives of a degree program in your own country. You are granted a J-1 Visa and come to America on a work study plan. When you arrive, you are segregated from the rest of the school population and forced to work on a factory line. Poof! Your American dream has dissolved into forced labor exploitation.
Sound far-fetched? A community college in Iowa began its J-1 program in early 2019. By summer, sixty international students had arrived. By November, the college was under investigation by the US State Department. A federal lawsuit was filed against the community college, recruiting company, and two factories in Sioux City, Iowa, on behalf of eight students from Chile. The students allege that they were brought to the United States “into debt bondage.” This bondage was not based on student loans. Students were told that the two-year program would include internships related to their field of study. They would work no more than 32 hours a week. Housing and food would be free. They would receive scholarships to cover tuition.
However, when reality set in, eleven international students who came to the US to study culinary arts and robotics were assigned jobs at Royal Canin (pet food factory) or Tur-Pak Foods (food packing plant). The workload was longer than 32 hours a week. These jobs had no educational value and were completely unrelated to the students’ intended fields of study. One of the plaintiffs, who came to the college to study robotics and automation, said he “worked carrying 50-lb. bags of rice and meat” that was used to make pet food at Royal Canin. Another plaintiff thought she would work in a job related to the culinary arts. Instead, she was employed on a food packing and assembly line. The lawsuit says the students were paid significantly less than US employees, and some of their money was deducted from their paychecks to fund kickbacks to the college and staffing agency.
In January 2020, the college issued a statement saying it had learned that students in the program were unhappy and blamed a “failure to clarify expectations” and “a breakdown in communication” for some of the problems. Not surprisingly, the J-1 visa program at Western Iowa Tech Community College ended. In February 2021, a group of Brazilian students also filed a federal lawsuit against the same community college, alleging that they, too, were forced to work long hours for little pay and were threatened with deportation if they did not comply. Both groups are suing for forced labor trafficking and are seeking damages. A second lawsuit seeks to require the college to make good on its promise to provide the students with an education.
It is one thing to lose a job, but another to lose the opportunity of education when it is already in your grasp. A Brazilian student remarked,“Now I return to my country without anything. Sure there are worse things. but I don’t feel they had any respect for us. They treated us like things, like furniture.”
References:
Quote from the Iowa City Press-Citizen
Photo credit: Hermes Rivera – Unsplash.com
