Holly's News From Washington - June 2012

Every time I pick up the newspaper, I read an article about how the U.S. Congress is deadlocked, partisan, broken. That may be the case on some issues, but I know of one issue where members of Congress across the political spectrum are working together to do something good. Our leaders are collaborating with integrity and good will to eradicate trafficking in U.S. labor contracts that recruit men and women to work on large U.S. military bases, such as those in Afghanistan.

Today there are approximately 69,000 third-country nationals working on U.S. bases around the world, most of them in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are most often recruited from Bangladesh, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Fiji and Uganda. Sam McCahon, a former U.S. Government official and an expert in foreign labor contracting, and his colleague, Sindhu Kavinamannil, interviewed thousands of third-country nationals working in Iraq, all of whom, it turned out, were victims of trafficking. All of them were deceived about the destination of their job and about the pay they would receive. Each worker had paid excessive recruiting fees from $2,500-$5,000. When they arrived in Iraq, the workers immigration documents were withheld, ensuring that they are effectively trapped (read an article about this issue published in the New Yorker).

There are many things that need to be done to eliminate trafficking from overseas labor contracts on U.S. bases. A great place to start is to make the prime contractors legally responsible for the actions taken by their contractors and sub-contractors, all the way down to individual labor recruiters. To date, the handful of large contractors responsible for foreign labor on American bases or Embassies abroad have simply denied responsibility for abuses carried out several rungs down the recruitment chain.

Thanks to leaders from across the political spectrum, that is about to change. In the House of Representatives, Representative James Lankford (R-OK) joined forces with Representative Connolly (D-VA) to develop the End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act (HR.4259). This bill, which now has 20 cosponsors, was added as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House of Representatives on May 18,2012. In the Senate, there are two bipartisan bills that address the issue. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Rob Portman (R-OH), Al Franken (D-MN), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), are sponsoring a version of this bill in the Senate, which is expected to pass later this summer. Read the full version of the bill.

The months running up to a presidential election are the most politicized times in Washington. Anti-slavery advocates from both political parties are showing that politics takes a back seat to the goal of eliminating slavery from our own governments labor supply chain. We at IJM and our friends around the U.S. are grateful to them.