Until recently, trafficking of women in the United States was rarely acknowledged. It was not until Russian and Ukrainian women began to be trafficked to the United States in the early 1990s that governmental agencies and many NGOs began to recognize the problem. As many critics, including us, have pointed out, Latin American and Asian women were trafficked into the United States for many years prior to the influx of Russian traffickers and trafficked women. The fact that it took blond and blue-eyed victims to draw governmental and public attention to trafficking in the United States gives, at least, the appearance of racism.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is increasingly researching and estimating numerically the trafficking of women into the United States by transnational sex industries. The U.S. government estimates that 45,000-50,000 women and children are trafficked annually from Southeast Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States to the United States for the sex industry, sweatshops, domestic labor, and agricultural work (Richard, 1999) .

However, the documented incidents of sex trafficking in the United States have, until recently, been published in isolation and usually in newspaper accounts following an enforcement crackdown and prosecution. These accounts have generally lacked the structural analysis that accounts for women being trafficked into prostitution. Dynamics often omitted from the picture of trafficking in the United States are: the power of the global sex industry, the subordination of women, the gendered labor market, and the multiple economic crises and inequalities that underlie women’s lives in many countries.

Many factors—including death threats to themselves and their families at home; conditions of isolation and confinement; the high power and mobility of the sex industry; fear of deportation; the lack of knowledge (and sometimes refusal to acknowledge) within many human rights and immigrant advocacy and service organizations who are struggling with a range of other problems; and the lack of “safe houses” and shelters—have made it nearly impossible for trafficked women to seek assistance and to testify against traffickers and other exploiters (Raymond, Hughes and Gomez, 2001). Limited legislation, light penalties, and long, complicated investigations to obtain trafficking convictions have made trafficking cases unattractive to many U.S. attorneys (Richard,

1999) . Additionally, the current immigration and criminal justice system in the United States has been weighted against trafficked women, especially hampering undocumented victims of trafficking from coming forward who feared deportation. With the passage of the U.S. Victims of Trafficking Act in the year 2000, it is hoped that more traffickers will be prosecuted and this negative treatment of victims will change.

In order to obtain an overview of how women are trafficked into the United States, this analysis relies on indirect and secondary sources, as well as a review of the means by which migrants enter or are smuggled into the United States. We have pieced together a composite picture of the scope and methods by which immigrant women, migrant women with temporary visas, and women lumped into the INS categories of “undocumented aliens” and “illegal aliens” end up exploited in prostitution in the United States.

48 Migration Trends of Women to the United States Sex trafficking into the US is opportunistically bound up with migration; that is, it takes advantage of the fact that women are migrating across borders, as well as within their countries, in unprecedented numbers for purposes of labor and income.

Background on Migration In the mid-1990s, nearly 2 percent of the world’s population, or about 125 million people, were international migrants, i.e., people living outside their country of origin, the highest number in history. In 1995, international migration was estimated at 4 million people annually, with about one-half of these, or 2 million people, entering the United States and Canada. This total includes permanent and temporary migrants, refugees, and “illegal” migrants. No one international or national data source identifies all of the people moving across national borders, but all data sources tracking refugees and migrant labor suggest that the numbers are on the increase (Martin and Widgren, 1996).

Women Migrants In the early 1990s, there were about 50 million international women migrants and 500 million internal women migrants (within countries). In 1993 women and children constituted 80 percent of the 19 million refugees in the world, higher than their proportion of the world population.

Forty-eight percent of international migrants in the early 1990s were female; and the percent of women migrating that is documented in visas has been increasing for all categories, including labor (INSTRAW, 1994). In general, there is a higher percentage of male international migrants within developing countries while “developed countries attract more female than male international migrants” (INSTRAW, 1994: 66). This statistic is particularly notable because the transnational sex trafficking in women has a distinct pattern of women being trafficked from developing countries (Asia, Latin America, and Africa) and new market economies in crisis (Russia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet countries) to so-called developed countries, including Western Europe, Australia, Japan, the US and Canada.

Women Migrants in US From 1960-1980 in the United States, women migrants outnumbered male migrants, under numbered men during early 1980s (which may be due to data error) and have outnumbered men since (INSTRAW, 1994). The United States, like other major receiving countries, has favored family reunification. Thus, women predominate in categories of immigrants admitted as relatives of citizens and other immigrants. However, this category masks women’s economic status in both the sending and receiving countries and perpetuates an underestimation of women’s labor force and economic activity (INSTRAW, 1994). Because family reunification enjoys favorable status in U.S. immigration policy, it may be potentially easier for men to make use of the INS category “fiancé(e) of U.S. citizen”— which is included within the status of family reunification – to traffic women into the United States.

Dearth of Knowledge about Women Migrants Men and women migrate in virtually equal numbers. Yet, much more is known about the determinants and consequences of male migration than female migration. A study of the migration of women undertaken by the United Nations in 1994 concluded that the dearth of knowledge about women’s migration is due primarily to four factors:

1. Experts see migration as motivated by economic opportunity (the “human capital model” in migration theory), the pull factor that has been attributed more generally to male migrants 49 than female migrants. This bias, combined with the chronic underestimation of women’s labor force and economic activity, has resulted in a lack of information and analysis about women migrants

2. Women are neglected, in general, by scholarly social science

3. Most migratory research is done by men, who see women as “passive followers” of men

4. Inadequacies in data about women migrants exist at the micro and macro levels because of the above factors and in part because “male proxy respondents” are used. Males interviewed underestimate female migration and women’s economic activity and, thus, generate bias in data and analysis (INSTRAW, 1994).

Sex Trafficking into the United States INS Estimates of Sex Trafficking The trafficking industry capitalizes on economic crises and poverty in the sending country or region and the surging demand in the receiving country/region for prostitution, utilizing arcane networks, falsification of documents, and the aid of corrupt officials. Other factors fueling the rise in migrant trafficking by criminals include civil war, lax U.S. border controls, and “a massive crackdown on drug traffickers,” according to the National Worker Exploitation Task Force, created in 1998 by the Justice, Labor, and State Departments in response to growing numbers of migrant trafficking (Gordy, 2000: 5).

Compared to other less conservative estimates, the U.S. government currently approximates that 2 million women and children worldwide are trafficked each year into slave-like labor and prostitution by a growing international and domestic trafficking industry that rivals and feeds into drugs and arms trafficking (Secretary of State Website). During the Clinton administration, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, Howard Koh, told a U.S. Senate hearing that international criminals “are moving away from “guns and drugs” to marketing women because of “weaker restraints and growing demand”(Shepard, 2000).

Sex trafficking of women into the United States has been less well documented, less penalized, and likely more profitable than trafficking of drugs and arms. It is linked with sex tourism, the mail-order-bride industry, and the Internet, all growing enterprises capitalizing on male demand and female vulnerability (Raymond, Hughes, Gomez, 2001; Ralph, 2000). Thus, current government estimates of sex trafficking may seriously understate the extent and gravity of this abuse, as well as its expansion in the United States.

Of the total number of women trafficked annually into the United States, the majority from Asia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and most of the remaining from Mexico and Central America (Secretary of State Website). How many of these are trafficked for prostitution, or end up in prostitution after being trafficked for domestic and/or sweatshop labor, is less clear from official figures.

In order to understand how women are trafficked into the United States, we have examined the means by which migrants enter the United States, with the assumption that traffickers use some of the same means that migrants do, at the same time that they maximize means that are more covert, least surveilled and most easily fraudulent. In doing so, we have examined the following data sources: demographic studies of U.S. immigration: INS reports and testimony on trafficking; an international study of mail-order brides commissioned by Congress; the Immigrant Public Use Tape published by the INS for 1996 on legal immigration; and the 1997 Statistical Yearbook of the INS.

50 Overview of U.S. Migration and Potential Means of Trafficking In the 1990s, four major types of migration into the United States occurred: permanent migration for labor and family reunification; refugee/asylee migration; temporary migration; and illegal migration, including undocumented entry, fraudulent entry, and visa overstay. An estimated million people per year—legal immigrants and illegal nonimmigrants—are entering the US, mainly from Latin America and Asia. They are both less and more educated than nativeborn.

The current complicated system of immigration gives preference to immigrants with US relatives, those with specialized skills, and refugees/asylees. Of the nearly 1 million immigrants per year, about 700,000 are legal; and an estimated 275,000 nonimmigrants enter illegally (Martin and Midgley, 1994: 1999).

About 40 percent of illegal migrants (or 110,000) are visa or nonimmigrant overstays. For people from most countries of the world, other than Mexico and Central America, nonimmigrant overstays is the most typical way of entering the US. The other estimated 60 percent of illegal migrants—a majority of whom are Mexicans and Central Americans—enter across the USMexico border, usually between official entry crossings (Statistics Illegal Alien Resident Population).

Nonimmigrant Visa Overstays An estimated 25 million persons enter the United States annually with temporary visas, such as tourist and student visas. Traffickers, using forged or legal documents, may use the “temporary nonimmigrant” visa process as a way to bring women into the United States. Once traffickers bring women into the United States on, for example, a “trainee visa” or “temporary visitor for pleasure” visa, they can move women from place to place in an underground network and keep them in prostitution for as women are marketable or they don’t get caught. Additionally, there are a number of exceptions to the visa process that may facilitate the smuggling of women by sex traffickers into the United States.

Visa Waiver Pilot Program The Visa Waiver Pilot Program (VWPP) allows visitors from 26 countries, most of which are European countries, to enter the United States without visas for up to 90 days, provided they have a roundtrip ticket. All that is needed is a recognized passport (valid, stolen or fake) for the estimated 17 million who enter without visas each year under this program. “Organized criminal elements realize that elimination of the nonimmigrant visa application facilitates entry into the United States...The [Immigration and Naturalization] Service is seeing expanded use of genuine stolen passports from VWPP countries” (Cronin, 1999:15). Using stolen or fake passports, sex industries could set up operations in VWPP countries to traffic women from former Soviet Union countries (or other countries of origin) into the United States without surveillance at the airport of entry.

Border Crossing Cards and Voluntary Departure Forms Although 25 million nonimmigrants were admitted to the United States in FY 1996 and documented as traveling temporarily on visas, and an estimated 17 million entered through the Visa Waiver Pilot Program, many more Mexicans and Canadians with border-crossing cards can enter and stay without being counted in the U.S. system. Most of the 350 million nonimmigrants that enter the United States come across the borders with Mexico and Canada. “No arrival and departure data is currently collected on the great majority of Mexican and Canadian citizens” (Cronin, 1999: 6).

51 In addition, citizens of other countries visiting the United States can leave across Mexican and Canadian borders without submitting a departure form, known as Form I-94. Thus, another likely route for traffickers to take women into and out of the United States are the borders between Canada and Mexico. Women brought in on temporary visas through United States airports can be brought across the Canadian and Mexican borders for departure from the United States relatively undetected, even after overstaying their visa, because the “United States has never had a formal system of departure inspection” (Cronin, 1999: 5). Rather the INS has left it up to air and sea carriers to collect I-94 departure forms.

According to law enforcement and immigration officials, traffickers are using the Akwesasne territory along the U.S.-Canadian border for strategic cross-border routes and entry points to bring women into the United States (Raymond, Hughes, and Gomez, 2001).

Smuggling Between 1996 and 1999, groups that smuggle migrants into the United States increased dramatically in “number and sophistication,” aided by public corruption and employing visa fraud (Nardi, 1999: 2). Smuggling in persons has grown into a multi-billion-dollar business—with fees as high as $50,000 per person. Methods of smuggling have grown more “sophisticated, complex, dangerous, and desperate” as the INS has increased surveillance and personnel (Nardi, 1999: 3).

According to the INS, migrant smuggling is high on the Southwest border, growing along the border with Canada, increasing in the Caribbean, and emerging on both coasts. Between the country of origin and the United States, smugglers are stopping in multiple countries, changing conveyances and creating fraudulent documents in a web of deceit that involves networks in those countries and money laundering.

Mail-Order Brides It is estimated that 100,000-150,000 women between the ages of 16-35 are being advertised for marriage, mainly from Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and the former Soviet Union countries.

Since the early 1990s, the mail-order bride marketing of Newly Independent States (NIS) women—from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—and international matchmaking organizations increased dramatically, especially in Russia and Ukraine. A documentary produced by the Global Survival Network (GSN) revealed that mail order bride businesses are fronts to recruit and traffic Russian women to Germany, Japan and the United States. A report to Congress on marriage marketing states that fiancé(e) visas are easily obtainable for immigrating into the United States, and that traffickers have determined that the fiancé(e) visa is an easy way to traffic women unnoticed (International Matchmaking Organizations, 1999). GSN estimates that 200 mail-order bride companies arrange between 2,000-5,000 marriages in the United States each year. Robert Scoles, a U.S. researcher, puts the estimate at 4,000-6,000 marriages per year, up to 4 percent of all immigrant female spouses (International Matchmaking Organizations, 1999:6).

Conclusion In summary, sex traffickers and smugglers can take advantage of those points in the immigration system with less surveillance:

1. Borders: Mexicans who hold border control cards (BCC) which allow the card carrier to travel 3 days and 25 miles within the border and Canadians, with a much less controlled system (6 months without visa), can smuggle women into and out of the United States with a BCC or Canadian passport.

2. Native American lands: Traffickers have made deals with the Akwesasne along the US-Canada border to traffic women across their land to elude surveillance by immigration and law enforcement officials.

3. Carriers: Most are required to document the arrival and departure of non immigrants. “Certain exceptions are made for carriers operating from a contiguous territory” (Cronin, 5). This exception creates an opportunity to traffic women on a carrier from or by way of, for example, Mexico and Canada without surveillance.

4. Incomplete data collection: The INS collects arrival and departure data on approximately 10 percent of foreign visitors (25-35 million) mainly at airports and seaports, but not at borders.

Thus traffickers could enter the United States and depart by way of Canada and Mexico with less surveillance.

5. Visa Waiver Pilot Program (VWPP): Persons from 26 countries, mainly European, are able to enter the United States without visas, comprising about 1/2 of documented non immigrants (17 million people). Thus, using legal and fraudulent passports, traffickers from VWPP countries can bring women into the United States with minimum surveillance.

6. Mail Order Bride Industry and Spouse/Fiance(e) Visa : Mail-order brides enter the country legally with “spouse” visas. Traffickers have identified this immigration category as a less surveilled means by which to traffic women into the United States.

7. Visa Overstay: The INS estimates that about 110,000 people remain in the United States on visa overstays annually. Visa overstay is likely to be one of the most common means which the sex industry uses to traffic women in the US.

In conclusion, the borders can be easier modes of entry than airports for traffickers who are smuggling women for prostitution because of their size, limited surveillance points, and the number of people who cross the borders per year (more than 300 million), most without surveillance.

The Visa Waiver Pilot Program with 26 select countries would be another context within which trafficking would happen through airports more easily unnoticed. Fraudulent “spouse” visas, arranged by traffickers with U.S. citizens, would make use of a favored immigration class that is considered reunification of family and little scrutinized. Fraudulent visas and passports, as well as visa overstays, have also been reported, in the enforcement cases publicized in the news media, as a primary means of entry used by the sex industry for trafficking women.