Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence

This is the first article (sep, 2007) I came across that reflects the view on the ground:

Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence - washingtonpost.com:

"The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated. In addition, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the Justice task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking.

In the Washington region, there have been about 15 federal cases this decade."

It's interesting how the guesstimate was arrived at:

"Although there have been several estimates over the years, the number that helped fuel the congressional response -- 50,000 victims a year -- was an unscientific estimate by a CIA analyst who relied mainly on clippings from foreign newspapers, according to government sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agency's methods. Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales told Congress last year that a much lower estimate in 2004 -- 14,500 to 17,500 a year -- might also have been overstated."

So don't think any prostitutes, hookers, sex workers, strippers, get it more right than the "administration". The same goes for ordinary johns, but since many are discussion board junkies, they may hear a thing or two. The same goes for journalists. With any excuse they put trafficking on the title but the story is a different thing.

Now hear it from the real deal from the ground, Carol Leigh:

In her article, D.A. Harris claims that "100 victims were discovered". The SF Chronicle report holds that "In a series of searches begun Thursday, investigators said they found more than 100 women working as prostitutes at 10 San Francisco massage parlors." D.A. Harris seems to be asserting that all the above were 'victims.' In fact, in the California Bill AB 22 (which we also contributed to), prostitutes are not trafficking victims unless they were victims of forced labor. The Chronicle story of July 13 claims that "Fifty-nine of the women came here willingly and will face deportation proceedings." These women certainly are victims, of the INS, that is. Other aspects of their victimization are unclear and current anti-trafficking efforts 're-victimize' them.

It's very typically that many people assume that all Asian women working in massage parlors are trafficking victims. At least 59% are not, as claimed. With the history of journalists and The Chronicle in particular, I doubt very much if the other 41% are. Most likely that the 59% are definitely to be deported. I'm certain the others many have valid visas and some residents.

The most complain about massage parlors (LA) in discussion boards is the age of woman, too old. That must be the residents. Instead of bored at home, they open a tiny shop and sell their often superior massage skills than the massage school graduates. If clients happen to want sex, they are more than happy to oblige.

US visas are pretty easy to get. For example, a Czech girl I met is young, single and don't have a real job. She can come any time, as long as she doesn't come too frequent and stay too long. Normal tourists visas are valid for 10 years! South Koreans won't be any more difficult to get a visa than the East Europeans.

Trafficking often involves luring young women in impoverished areas by offering them a false job, then force them into prostitution. If they tell you that many South Korean women are kidnapped on mass and shipped to SF, you won't believe it. But the false job lure is also not that credible. It may work a decade ago for once when it's not well known that the jobs are scams. There's a lot more penetration in S Korea than US - the Internet that is:

Cyworld has penetration rates that would make Rupert Murdoch, CEO of MySpace parent News Corp. (Research), green with envy: An astonishing 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s use the service. Celebrities and politicians set up their own minihompies, and the way to get ahead in twentysomething Korean society is to found a popular Cyworld club, or chat room. -- O-Reilly

The media portraits Chinese arriving in containers at Long Beach. In reality nowadays the Chinese aren't that desperate to leave. I just saw the news that this year, Disney and Universal Studio are all ready with Chinese theme park guides, for the first wave of group tourists from China. For the first time, the US administration allow group tourists, probably meaning anybody with a return ticket can get on one of the many tour buses running around LA sight seeing, without fearing that they will disappear into the vast Chinese community here. [My bad: it looks more like the US tourist industry lobby China to allow their tourists to go to USA.]

If you follow the articles, it looked as if the journalists never follow the trial outcomes. They only like to report operations, stings, and the number of people rounded up. There are no reliable statistics of trafficked victims. You have to remember that the CIA use newspaper clippings to guesstimate.

Now a typical journalist (full article):

Authorities were also searching for suspects involved in human trafficking. Of the nearly 25 locations that were visited, one woman said she was a victim of human trafficking.

But not all women arrested last week appeared to be forced into it.

I'm not making light of the trafficking problem, but I'm fed up with journalists. You can see the attitude of them. The appearance as felt by the reporter doesn't fit the fact he reported. Also, I wonder why they have not any details of the woman. Let's see if the age and race fits with the trafficking estimations. By the way, the area in the map of the 25 raid locations easily covers 500,000 to a million population.

"Everyone seems to realize that it is a widespread problem, but we just don't have those statistics," Haley said. "It is probably happening a lot more than we think. Getting the victim to come forward is a problem."

Last year, a human trafficking case out of Los Angeles led to the conviction of nine people from a sex ring where victims as young as 13 were promised jobs, then suffered threats and beatings as they worked as prostitutes in brothels.

In john's terms, this is blatantly a bait and switch. It's not fact, but they tell you what you like to hear anyway. Then they talk about something else supposed to be hard facts, but no link to any article. For god's sake, I'm looking for convictions, and no journalist seemed to be interested to report it. Anyway, I bet the conviction has nothing to do with the area in question.

If you don't believe the US president because of Iraq, you should believe 10 times less what the UN says, because of Iraq - UN is corrupted from top to bottom as evidence from the oil for food program. I'm sure 99.999..% of the UN are doing their jobs or wanting to do their jobs, but they are not elected, little accountability. How the UN can give any useful statistics about trafficking and prostitution, when the CIA use foreign paper clippings? For the WHO, it's a matter of looking at hospital data and sample local doctors' data. Do you think all the brothels in the world tell you where they are and tell you how much they earn?

It's a matter of getting the facts straight and use resources wisely. Do you know how they deal with underage prostitution of American girls in LA? They don't. They all have a fake driver license made of authentic materials - just their records don't really exist. When they get caught their fake ID and age will be entered into the system. They are not held long enough for thorough checks. When they are arrested again, nobody will verify anything about their ID already in the system. It's from the discussion boards, but if there's anything incorrect, there would have been many many rebuttals over the years, like many other issues. Also, sometimes when (adult) prostitutes are arrested, newspapers report them to have multiple ID's and nobody knows which ones are the real ones.