Relief for Victims of Trafficking
Author | Elizabeth Anne Campbell; Rachel DeLia Settlage; Veronica Thronson |
Pages | 45-67 |
I. Introduction
The Trafcking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA)1 was the rst leg-
islative attempt by the United States to comprehensively address the issue
of human trafcking. Human trafcking is another way of describing
compelled service. The T visa, a nonimmigrant visa specically for foreign
national victims of a severe form of human trafcking, was created with
the passage of the TVPA and was subsequently reauthorized in 2003, 2005,
2008, and 2013.2
Prior to the TVPA, compelled services and slavery had been addressed
by a variety of statutes. In the case of commercial sex acts, the Mann Act
served as a backdrop to the TVPA. The Mann Act, passed in 1910, criminal-
ized the crossing of state borders of any woman or child for the purposes
1. Trafcking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), Pub. L. No. 106-386, 114
Stat. 1464 (2000) (codied as amended in various sections of the U.S.C.).
2. Trafcking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-
193, 117 Stat. 2875 (2003) (codied as amended in various sections of the U.S.C.);
Trafcking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-164,
119 Stat. 3558 (2006) (codied as amended in various sections of the U.S.C.); Wil-
liam Wilberforce Trafcking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, Pub.
L. No. 110-457, 122 Stat. 5044 (2008) (codied as amended in various sections of
the U.S.C.); Trafcking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2013, Pub. L. No.
113-4, 12 Stat. 136 (2013) (codied as amended in various sections of the U.S.C.).
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Chapter 4
Relief for Victims of Trafcking
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of prostitution or “immoral purposes.”
3
It was later amended in 1986 to
protect males and then to only prohibit prostitution and other illegal sex-
ual acts.4 However, as it applies to human trafcking, the Mann Act was
underinclusive in that it did not protect victims of labor trafcking.5 Forced
labor was prosecuted under involuntary servitude statutes. However, these
statutes had been limited by the U.S. Supreme Court to only criminalize
labor induced by force or abuse of the legal system.
6
This did nothing to
protect the many people who were induced into labor by the use of fraud
or psychological and economic coercion.7
In enacting the TVPA, Congress recognized that slavery exists in the 21st
century and that in order to effectively combat trafcking, legal frameworks
need to prohibit labor and sex induced by nonviolent coercion.8 While both
labor and sex trafcking were acknowledged as problems in Congress’s
ndings, there was more of an emphasis on the experiences of sex trafck-
ing victims. Congress seemed particularly concerned with the trafcking
of women and children;
9
however, despite an emphasis on these particu-
lar groups in the purposes and ndings of the TVPA, the active provisions
criminalized both sex and labor trafcking and protected male victims
along with females and children.
The TVPA had three primary goals: prevention, prosecution, and pro-
tection. Prevention was embodied by those provisions that called for
collaboration with the international community to increase economic
3. White-Slave Trafc (Mann) Act, 36 Stat. 825 (1910) (codied as amended at
18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424).
4. Mann Act Amendments, Pub. L. No. 99-628, § 5(b)(1), 100 Stat. 3511 (1986)
(codied as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424).
5. B C, K K, A M S W,
H T L P (LexisNexis, forthcoming 2014).
6. U.S. v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931 (1988).
7. TVPA § 102(b)(13), 22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(13) (2012).
8. TVPA, Pub. L. No. 106-386, 114 Stat. 1464, 1466–69 (2000) (codied as
amended in 22 U.S.C. § 7101(b) (2006)). See also H.R. R. N. 106-939, at 101
(2000) (“Section 1589 will provide federal prosecutors with the tools to combat
severe forms of worker exploitation that do not rise to the level of involuntary ser-
vitude as dened in Kozminski.”).
9. See TVPA, Pub. L. No. 106-386, 114 Stat. 1464, 1466 (2000) (codied as
amended in 22 U.S.C. § 7101 (2006)).
ChApter 446
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