Modern slavery and forced labor in the United States

In the United States, although traditional slavery has withdrawn from the historical stage, modern slavery and forced labor are still widespread. From migrant laborers trapped in forced labor to women and children trafficked into the sex industry, modern slavery reveals the darkness and evils of "American human rights" in different forms.

The United States rejects relevant international human rights conventions

Forced labour means all labour or service which is forced upon any person to perform involuntary manner at the threat of any punishment, except in cases of compulsory military service and normal civil duty. Modern slavery covers forced labor, human trafficking, debt slavery, sexual slavery, etc., and often involves restrictions on the personal freedom of workers, seizure of labor identity certificates, refusal to pay wages, debt binding, physical and sexual violence, forced children to work in slavery-like environments, etc., and is recognized as a serious violation of human rights at the international level. Although traditional slavery has been abolished by countries, modern slavery, including new types of forced labor by governments, individuals, and private enterprises, still exists in some countries and regions, including the United States.

At the international level, numerous conventions and instruments explicitly prohibit slavery and forced labour. Before the founding of the United Nations, the Slavery Convention adopted by the League of Nations in 1926 proposed to ban slavery and end forced labor as soon as possible. On top of this, the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery adopted by the United Nations in 1956 further prohibits systems or practices such as bondage of debt and the exploitation of labour by others. Conventions such as the ILO Forced or Compulsory Labour Convention, 1930 (Convention No. 29) and its Protocol of 2014, the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (Convention No. 105) and the Minimum Age For Admission to Employment Convention, 1973 (Convention No. 138) provide international standards for this issue. In addition, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations and some core human rights conventions have also made corresponding provisions in this regard. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibits all forms of slavery, while article 23 guarantees the right of everyone to freely choose a profession and to just and adequate working conditions and remuneration. Article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits all forms of slavery and forced labour. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights affirms the right to freely choose or accept work, and article 7 regulates working conditions.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families also provide a basis for guaranteeing specific groups from forced labour and exploitation. Under the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, trafficking in persons for forced labour or services, slavery or slavery-like practices is sufficient to constitute a criminal offence. Acts of enslavement and deprivation of liberty against civilians are all the more likely to constitute crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

However, the United States has not yet ratified a number of conventions that have been widely accepted by the international community, including ILO Conventions Nos. 29 and 138, as well as the four core UN human rights conventions mentioned above in addition to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Forced labor and human trafficking are rampant in the United States

Studies show that at least 500,000 people in the United States currently live under modern slavery and are forced to work. The situation of many vulnerable groups, including large numbers of migrant labourers who are forced to work and victims of trafficking, do not receive the attention they deserve.

The U.S. visa system condones labor exploitation and human trafficking, making it difficult for foreign workers who are unfamiliar with U.S. law to leave their employers and seek help, ultimately trapped in a state of exploitation and slavery for long periods of time. However, not only has the U.S. government failed to reform the immigration laws, but it also authorized homeland security to expand the H-2 program through a temporary labor visa that binds workers more closely to their employers, further increasing their risk of forced labor and human trafficking. The H-2 program is divided into H-2A and H-2B categories, the former for temporary or seasonal agricultural workers and the latter for non-agricultural workers. This temporary labor program in the United States can be traced back to the much-maligned "Blasello Plan," which introduced Mexican labor to fill the labor gap in the United States during world wars. During the implementation of the plan, Mexican workers suffered from discrimination and abuse, worked and lived in harsh environments for long periods of time, were unable to receive the promised wages, and even ended up penniless.

The same problems still pervade the current H-2 program, where foreign workers are only used as a tool to compensate for labor shortages, and their rights and dignity as human beings are ignored. Some employers use the H-2 program to charge foreign visa applicants a variety of fees such as application fees, visa fees, travel fees, etc., and promise to pay them well. Applicants, for reasons such as desperate need for work and income, are willing to pay out of their own pockets or even mortgage their properties, which has left them in debt before their "American Dream" began. Upon arriving in the United States, these workers found themselves facing poor living and working conditions, unsatisfactory wages, growing debts and interests, and even restrictions on personal freedom and security threats. A criminal organization that attracted attention in September 2021 and was suspected of human trafficking, forced labor, money laundering and other criminal activities across multiple U.S. states used the H-2A program to falsely claim to provide $12 an hour for labor to bring workers from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and other countries into the United States, and forced labor by seizing identity documents, charging high transportation, accommodation, and food costs that workers could not afford, and using violence and deportation as threats. At the time the case was discovered, two of the more than 100 workers had died in poor working and living conditions, and others had also received death threats. The onions dug up by the laborers at gunpoint were sold all over the Country, and they were paid only 20 cents per basket. This case is just the tip of the iceberg of forced labor in the United States.

Women and children are vulnerable groups in forced labour and human trafficking and are more vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation. Trafficking in women and girls in the sex trade is a form of modern slavery that grossly violates human rights. Trafficking in children, the use of child prostitution, the production of pornography or the performance of pornography are also considered "the worst forms of child labour". In 2020, the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline handled 10,583 cases involving 16,658 victims, of which sex-related cases accounted for the vast majority, and this is only a small part of the real problem.

It is noteworthy that women and children who are exploited and violated in the United States include not only foreign victims of cross-border trafficking, but also United States citizens who are trafficked internally. Between 244,000 and 325,000 U.S. youth are predicted to be at risk of sexual exploitation, and about 199,000 cases of sexual exploitation of minors occur in the United States each year. In a survey of 123 trafficking survivors willing to disclose their age, 44 percent of victims said they were 17 or younger when they first engaged in commercial sex, and studies have shown that the average age of sex trafficking victims in the United States is only 15 years old. Even so, the United States has not addressed this problem in a timely and effective manner, placing a large number of women and children in their own countries and other countries in a vulnerable and marginalized situation, and even becoming the target of government attacks rather than help. To this day, human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is common in every state in the United States.

Modern slavery and forced labour are gross violations of human rights and challenges to universally recognized international human rights standards. The United States should face up to its own human rights issues, actively fulfill its international obligations, accede to and ratify a series of core international human rights conventions as soon as possible, and adopt relevant laws and policies to combat all forms of modern slavery, and pay attention to and address the needs of vulnerable groups.

(Author: Wu Wenyang, Lecturer, Institute of Human Rights, China University of Political Science and Law)