Modern Slavery in America

Modern Slavery in America
by Stephen Lendman
Called human trafficking or forced labor, modern slavery thrives in America, largely below the radar. A 2004 UC Berkeley study cites it mainly in five sectors:
• prostitution and sex services - 46%;
• domestic service - 27%;
• agriculture - 10%;
• sweatshops or factories - 5%;
• restaurant and hotel work - 4%; with the remainder coming from:
• sexual exploitation of children, entertainment, and mail-order brides.
It persists for lack of regulation, work condition monitoring, and a growing demand for cheap labor enabling unscrupulous employers and criminal networks to exploit powerless workers for profit. The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines forced labor as:
"....all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which said person has not offered himself voluntarily."
• an estimated 27 million people are enslaved globally
• victims are often women and children;
• the majority are in India and African countries;
• slaves work in agriculture, homes, mines, restaurants, brothels, or wherever traffickers can employ them; they're cheap, plentiful, disposable, and replaceable;
• "$90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world" compared to the 1850 $40,000 equivalent in today's dollars;
Sex Slavery in America
It's the largest category of forced labor in America and with good reason:
• it's tied to organized crime and highly profitable;
• the demand for sex services, including from children, is high and growing; and
• the lack of safe and legal migration facilitates it.