Child Labor Prostitution In The United States

“Human trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, and the transport of people within countries for sexual exploitation, forced labor, and/or organ donating.” (Gale) “Slavery is the condition in which one or more persons is owned as property by another and is under the owner’s control.” (American Heritage Dictionary) Trafficked people who are often regarded as disposable, are often used for these various reasons. Although, many believe slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery still exists in 2017. In order to understand that human trafficking is a form of slavery, one needs to examine what it is, the effects, and the solutions.

Human trafficking is modern day slavery and if it was wrong in 1865 when congress passed the 13th amendment, than it is wrong now. The definition of human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of sex and labor. There are two major types of trafficking. The first being sex trafficking, is the recruiting, harboring, transporting, or taking of a person for commercial sex that is induced by force. Labor trafficking being the other, is the recruiting, harboring, transporting, or taking of a person for labor or services. This is done through the use of force for involuntary servitude or slavery.

     Child Labor, refers to the economically active population under the age of fifteen years old, who are employed in various industries (Grootaert, 2). Recently, child labor has become a large topic of debate; however, in most cases, it is very unfavorable. The perception that globalization is leading towards the exploitation of children, is becoming an important problem for international business. In my opinion, child labor should be eradicated. It is not only harmful to the health of children, but it takes away their chance for an education, and simply takes away their childhood.

Back in the 1600’s slavery was brought to the United States to help aid in the production of crops. We have come a long ways since then through our government system to help provide a more riotous and free system, the land of the free. Slavery ended and racism has declined but today there still exists a different type of slavery and this is known as human trafficking. Many call sex or human trafficking the modern day type of slavery because people are forced to work for another person mostly by selling their body. According to the United Nations and their protocol signed by more then 80 countries sex/ human trafficking is the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use

Many believe that slavery ended years ago. However, a modern form of slavery has ruined the lives of thousands of people from around the world and continues to do so. It is referred to as human trafficking. Human trafficking is “the movement of persons for the purpose of exploitation.” People can be sold into sex slavery, or forced to do hard labor. They are taken, oppressed and treated as an object. Even though slavery was abolished in the United States in the 19th century, exploitation, dehumanization, and forced labor continued and still exists today. The history and origin of slavery impacts the current issue of slave trading and human trafficking in America because it is still an existing problem

Human trafficking is a crime. Victims no longer have their rights as human beings. Bill Flores once said, “Imagine having all of your freedoms taken away, being forced to work against your will, and constantly living under the threat of violence - in short, being forced to live as a slave. Sadly, this situation is a reality for millions of children, women, and men each year as part of the global human trafficking

Human and Sex trafficking in the United States is the newest form of slavery. Traffickers use this form of slavery to help with the illegal act of smuggling drugs and selling people to gain money for sexually acts. Sex trafficking has easily been compared to slavery. People are kidnapped from their homes, schools, and work to become a slave to pleasure people. They are forced to work many jobs as they are to be sold to businesses or owners to work for little to no money. Unlike slavery in the 1600’s, race does not matter. The only thing most would care about is the age or sex of a human. This is never a choice among people to sell themselves unless they do not have a “pimp”, this is force. There are many types of sex trafficking which is very

When thinking of slavery, it is common for a person to think of stereotypical slavery: African Americans working in harsh conditions without pay or choice. However, since the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, this type of slavery has decreased significantly. Today, we use the term ‘human trafficking’ to describe modern slavery. Grant Oster states that, by definition, “human trafficking is the act or gathering, moving, receiving, or keeping of human beings by threat,

181-187). Although this theory of human trafficking only goes back to the 19th century, this is something that has gone on for a a long amount of time. If one was to think about history and how slaves were traded from Africa to the United States, the theory of “Human Trafficking” still applies. The slaves from Africa would be traded to someone who bought them. At times the slaves would be bought to work in fields, raise the children, and to provide sex for the “master” whenever summoned. If the person was to buy them to be a worker, or to nurse the children, even to have sex with. The definition of human trafficking is the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation (Unknown,

Human trafficking is classified as modern slavery because of the method in which people are recruited (coerced, kidnapped, sold, etc.) and transported to work in deplorable conditions where their basic human rights are violated (Gould, 2012). “Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and/ or exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person, typically through sexual exploitation or forced labour” (Department of Justice, 2015). Human trafficking

and drug crime. Currently, The FBI has identified San Diego as one of 13 U.S. cities designated

Human trafficking can take many forms, as well as many victims. One form of trafficking is slavery. Slavery is having a worker who is unpaid and who works by force using coercion, fraud or threat of bodily harm. “According to the United Nations, there are between 27 and 30 million modern-day slaves in the world (Jesionka, “Human Trafficking: The Myths and the Realities”).” “By 1860, the nation’s black population had jumped from 400,000 to 4.4 million, of which 3.9 million were slaves.(Henry Louis Gates).” That means there are nearly ten times more slaves today than there were in the late 1800’s.

The Department of Homeland Security defines human trafficking as a “modern day form of slavery involving the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain” (Homeland Security, 2016). When hearing the word “slavery”, what typically comes to mind for most Americans is our nations history of the use of slaves hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Americans would so violently and demandingly uproot African-Americans from their home countries. Although they didn’t know it at the time, theses slaves would then be forced onto a boat for months with no idea of their next destination. Not to mention the quality of living on these boats was something we can probably barely imagine. Many slaves didn’t make it past the months long cross Atlantic journey. These innocent lives were stolen away from freedom and a life that they would never see again.

Prostitution of minors occurs all around the world. We do not notice because it may not concern us, and it is difficult to act when something does not affect us in any way. It affects you if you have children or nieces who are under age right now selling themselves to help out their families who are in need of money. What would you do right then to help them get out of that situation? That's what's going on in Europe right now when you visit, is the same thing that is happening in Mexico. There are many young girls selling themselves because they have to work to support their family.

Currently there are 168 million child laborers in the world. More than half of them, 85 million, employed at hazardous jobs, according to the International Labour Organization. In the article “In Praise of Cheap Labor Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all”, Paul Krugman Professor of economics at MIT, explains that child labor cannot just be wiped away like so many other distasteful practices. That it takes a perfect storm of economic success and low child labor numbers for a full transition to labor laws that ban it. Employers will agree to follow the law; similar to what happened in the U.S. in the 1930’s when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This Act established standards for the basic minimum wage and overtime pay. It restricts the hours that children under age 16 can work and forbids the employment of children under age 18 in certain jobs deemed too dangerous. Krugman believes that many developing countries are not at a point where they can support a full ban on child labor. He gives the example of countries like “Indonesia [who are,] still so poor that progress is measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat” (Krugman 4). Professor of economics at Yale university, Christopher Udry, in his article “Child Labor” provides a definition of child labor as “ the sacrifice of the future welfare of the child in exchange for additional income” (243). The causes of Child labor are not as simple as cultural or economic reasons, and a