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Jacqueline Valore
English 1301
Prof. Lewis
November 18, 2008

Human Trafficking

Human trafficking involves the involuntary movement of people across and

within borders and typically involves coercion, deception, and violence, (AguilarMillan). Human trafficking has been found to come in a close third of being one of
the largest illicit global trades, and yet there have not been very many movements
to stop trafficking from occurring. One of the main reasons as to why we see so
much of this trade happening is because it is often the victims poverty that makes
them vulnerable, (Desmond).
When dealing with the topic of human trafficking, there are many branches
and forms of this horrendous global trade, but usually it has to do with a persons
background. A persons wealth and housing environments influence a persons
needs and nature as well. Most human trafficking victims are found to have povertystricken backgrounds, usually looking for ways to help support their families.
Unfortunately many victims are children who are sold into slavery to pay off
debts. This type of modern day slavery is actually the most common, where children
are sold to pay off debts. This an awful act usually proposed by their very own
families, but what is worse is when the child is sold into prostitution.

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When dealing with the topic of human trafficking, there are many branches
and forms of human trafficking. Sex trafficking is one of the most common merely
because sex and violence sells newspapers, (Wehrfritz). On many occasions, it
occurs when many women who were lured by thoughts of working, have been
forced to work in brothels, factories, and even private homes. These women are
women who look for honest work and earnings to share with their families back
home; they are willing to risk the unknown to enter this country and stay here. More
desperate than dream-ridden, many such migrants have ended up as victims of
human trafficking, (Dougherty). These victims are, mostly, women between the
ages of 18-24 years old. They are deceived into being trafficked by the most
common lie: the promise of work. Once they travel from their home, are told what
they are supposed to be working as and then suddenly are trapped. Their passports
are taken from them, and forced into modern slavery where they are given little or
no freedom at all. If they fail to cover their food and rent, most often than most,
they are pulled into prostitution. When this occurs, their invisible leash becomes
laced all too tightly about their necks tighten. Forced to remain within [their]
eyeshot except when [they] work the streets, when and if they are freed and pay
off their fraud debts many modern slaves refuse to return home in fear that their
families may reject them (Jewell). Another reason as to why they do not return is
because they now know nothing else besides being trafficked.
Though many women are kidnapped and forced into the sex world and
prostitution, women do not fight back from prostitution because they are scared into
silence. Women who attempt to escape endure beatings, torture, and rape,
(Jewell), as well as threats from their bosses that their families will be harmed.
Some women choose to place themselves out in the world to sell their bodies for

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pleasure to the highest paying customer though. Women choose prostitution;
thinking is it the easiest way to provide for their families. By taking the chance to
find not only freedom from their poor economies, they also take the chance of
enslaving their own selves. And many women who sell their lives to a man are given
equality rights when married to him.
But what happens when this form of human trafficking is accepted?
Examples of accepted human trafficking are mail-order brides. Mail ordered
women usually are women with the intent of marrying someone from a usually
better developed country. It is interesting how, two people separated by thousands of
milesphysical opposites from different generations, cultures and experiences, come together to
find happiness that could turn bitter in an instantaneous moment (Kamb). When a mail-

order bride is brought over to the states, she can marry a man without the worry of
being abused, but being wedded to a U.S. citizen has become an easy setup for
abuses, (Zhang).
To Nataliya Derkach, [James Fox] seemed a terrific catch: caring,
financially secure and serious about family. The Ukrainian woman, who
met James Fox through an international matchmaking agency,
imagined her future unfolding happily on 40 acres in Loudoun County.
She and Fox married in November 1998, less than three months after
they met.
The situation had grown far more desperate by July 2000, when she
moved into a shelter for battered women.

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[But ] the agency never recruited Nataliya Fox and that it therefore had
no obligation to tell her about the battered spouse waiver. Fox, a civil
engineer now engaged to someone else and living in Leesburg,
[described Nataliya] as an opportunistic bride who has committed
immigration fraud and would do anything and say anything to stay in
the United States. (Rich)
With the persistence of a man's romantic pursuits and the promise of the American
dream (Kamb), these words give more hope and often lead both men and women into a world
cloaked in the darkness by our own society. Though, offering a marriage certificate to a

foreign citizen is priceless if it means freedom in the United States. This does not
apply to only women and it has not been the first time that a foreigner has been
accused of merely trying to gain access into the States. And sometimes the act of
marrying a foreigner to help them gain citizenship happens all too often:
Manhattan district attorney charged one woman who applied for a total
of twenty-

seven marriage licenses from 1984 to 2002, and three

other woman for marrying more

than a dozen men. These

women allegedly offered to marry illegal immigrants for about

$1,000 apiece. Sometimes they went through with the marriage ceremonies,
whereas

other times they did not (Zhang).

Many of the men and women who marry immigrants, dont bother to file for a
divorce before they go out and receive a new marriage license. In the turnaround,
most marriage frauds between immigrants and U.S. Citizens are easily completed.
These immigrants who have been able to jump through the loop hole of being
caught and tried for human trafficking have no remorse for what theyve done.

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Because much of the human trafficking that involves a victim being married to a
U.S. citizen ends very successfully. Many victims choose this path of marriage to a
U.S. citizen because if they are trafficked to the U.S. and then found by authorities
they become eligible for such government benefits as legal aid, medical care and
education, the same benefits available to refugees. But one benefit they want most,
the right to work, is not given to them, (Dougherty). By being married to a U.S.
citizen they can be promised paid work, equal rights, as well as citizenship within
five years. Another reason as to why immigrants may choose this way into the
United States is because they are all guaranteed human rights, (Reinhardt).
Both the wonderful and horrible thought about this scandalous scam is that
nothing is forever. Once the U.S. citizens new spouse obtains their legal status, a
divorce can be filed and the process starts all over again. But whereas these men
are choosing, they are not as vulnerable as mail-order brides. These women are
mainly at risk for the most danger because they are vulnerable to domestic abuse
because they are unfamiliar with the laws, language and customs of their new
home.
This form of human trafficking is causing a stir among our country. With many
cases being opened in our court systems because of mail order brides and
immigrants, we must choose. Do we protect these men and woman coming into the
United States or reject them from our society as a whole?
In late September 2000, there was a case where a mail-order bride, Anastasia
Solovieva-King, was brutally murdered by the very man shed come to the States to

marry, he seemed quiet gentle and much like Derkach found him to be kind and the
perfect man. All she wanted was to see the world and escape a life of poverty in a destitute

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city in the former Soviet blocSolovieva's parents, Alevtina and Anatolyi, feared the
impoverished environs were oppressing her free-spirited nature, (Kamb). But her dreams were
short lived when Indle King Jr. took her life with his own hands.

Because of this tragic event, and Anastasias death as well as Derkachs case,
in July of 2003, congress was motivated by her death and drafted a bill that would
enable foreign women seeking American husbands to learn the criminal background
of men courting them through matchmaking agencies, now men wanting to marry
a woman coming through a matchmaking agency must complete a questionnaire
on his criminal and marital background screened from all mental illnesses and/or
disorders seller must obtain the man's record from the National Sex Offenders
Public Registry database the questionnaire and record must be translated to the
woman's native language and provided to her, and finally the woman must agree
to the communication to the man as well as agreeing that she was not forced into
the agreement (Associated Press).
Mail-order brides are in a limbo, quite literally. They accept being trafficked by
choice, but can place themselves in a situation where their very lives are at stake.
To a woman or man for that matter in an underdeveloped country the price of
coming to the United States even with the threat of losing their lives is worth it.
They want freedom that badly that they would sell their very souls to the devil
himself in order to receive it. Our culture is one of honor and pride, but when are
any of us going to stand up and take responsibility for how our society has shaped
into this vile form of selling ones person as merely an item to be bought and sold?
This subject, mail-order, immigration, as well as any other form of human trafficking
are hush-hush topics and are seen as something not to be spoken about. But the
most embarrassing thing for our people is that it took the death of one woman for

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our nation to respond and so many other court cases for our whole to protect these
people.
They want the freedom we were born with, the freedom we were given when
we were born here in the states and the very freedom that so many of us take for
granted.