Rebuild America Jobs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today for a moment to introduce an issue I have become interested in in the last few months, one that, quite frankly, I didn't know a lot about--the issue of human trafficking and slavery.

For many Americans, for many of us in the 21st century, we think of slavery as a concept of the 18th and 19th centuries, something that happened in other places a long time ago, when, in fact, it exists today around the world. The issue is actually pretty startling. The State Department estimates that there are between 700,000 and 800,000 people in the world each year who are trafficked. The number of people trafficked in the United States is about 16,000 to 17,000. That is a lot of people in the 21st century who are being trafficked and are held in bondage. I saw a special on a cable network recently that outlined this issue. I then started researching it. I was shocked to learn that my home State of Florida is particularly affected by this issue.

Recently, I had the honor and the privilege of being appointed to the Helsinki Commission, the group here in the Senate that works, along with the House of Representatives, as Commissioners on that Commission. We held a hearing yesterday on the issue of human trafficking, and it is an issue I am going to be increasingly speaking about over the next few weeks because I truly believe it is one of the great humanitarian causes of this new century. It begins with awareness, with a clear understanding of what is happening around the world with regard to this issue, the fact that there are these people. As we speak, as I stand here today, perhaps within walking distance of this very building there are people held against their will in servitude.

The one that gets all the publicity--and rightfully so because it is so painful and outrageous--is sex trafficking, children and young girls and young women brought into this country and held against their will as sex slaves. It happens all over the world. It is sad to learn there are governments around the world that cooperate with this and tolerate it and are corrupted by it. That gets a lot of publicity and attention, and we are going to be paying a lot of attention to that.

We heard stories of diplomats who work in this city, diplomats from other nations who come here and bring domestic workers with them to their homes and hold them here against their will and take their entire paycheck. We are going to be denouncing some of these people on the floor by name in the weeks and months to come.

The other thing that is shocking--although I said the sex trafficking gets a lot of attention--is the forced-labor aspect of it. People are recruited in other countries, brought here, and they are told: We are going to bring you to the United States, and you are going to come here, you will make a living, make some money, and you can send some back home. When they get here, they are held against their will, and they are not paid. In fact, sometimes they owe traffickers money, and they are held in squalid conditions. That is happening here in this country underneath our very noses, not to mention the egregious cases around the world, and we are going to focus on those cases around the world as well.

The State Department, by the way, ranks every country on the basis of how much they cooperate, on the progress they are making in prosecuting and investigating these issues. Those are available. A report came out recently. It identified the countries that are doing well, the countries that are trying to do well, and the countries that, frankly, couldn't care less and actually do not mind this stuff going on in their jurisdiction. They deserve to be condemned not just on this floor but in the international community, and we will talk about that as well in the weeks to come.

I do not think we can point the finger at anyone unless we look at ourselves as a nation and society and call attention to this issue. So, as I begin to introduce this issue and my involvement in it, there are a couple of things I would like to point out from yesterday's hearing.

The first is that this is largely occurring as a result of criminal enterprises. The same people who traffic drugs and are involved in all kinds of organized crime are also involved in human trafficking. We see that increasingly in major areas, and we have seen prosecutions, but we have also learned that increasingly what we are finding are small-scale operations, sometimes families.

We heard the case of a mother and her two sons who were involved in a human trafficking ring. It is very profitable, very lucrative. It costs about $10,000 to bring a young woman into this country, and they can make that money back in the sex trade within a few days, and after that it is all profit. It is outrageous and has opened the door to small-scale operations that are doing this.

What are the impediments to dealing with this? There are a few, and it will take a long time to work on.

The first, unfortunately, is lack of recognition. I think that at the local level and even at the Federal level, our law enforcement officers and personnel who want to do the right thing probably need more information about identifying these cases, seeing the markers of human trafficking, identifying cases that clearly reek of human trafficking, and identifying those and treating them for what they are.

The second thing we need is better protections for these victims. You know you are not going to be able to prosecute people and put them in jail unless the victims are willing to testify, and victims are not going to testify if they don't feel secure. If they believe you are going to deport them or put them in immigration jails or, worse, if they think these organized crime rings are going to harm their families overseas, it is going to be very hard to get victims to cooperate.

Last but not least--and I know this is a complicated issue--our immigration system is contributing to this. We have a very complicated immigration system, and it is an expensive one, a burdensome one. What it is creating is the need for middlemen, and, guess what, more often than not, unfortunately, nowadays the middlemen, these foreign labor agencies--too many of them--are, in fact, human traffickers who are utilizing this system, the legal immigration system, to bring people into this country and, once they are here, to hold them against their will. We have to focus on that because ultimately that has to be solved. Our legal immigration system has to be modernized. If it is not, one of the problems we will continue to face is this issue of human trafficking.

The good news is that here in Congress there is a bill--reauthorization of the TVPRA. It passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in October of this year by a 12-to-6 vote. It does a few things.

It promotes increased cooperation among Federal agencies, between the United States and other countries.

It supports and enhances the victim-centered approach, which basically says we are going to approach this from the viewpoint of the victim and create protections and security for the victims so they can cooperate and help us prosecute these people.

The bill focuses on cutting off human trafficking at its roots by supporting international efforts to focus on this issue. There are a lot of countries out there that want to do the right thing; they either do not have the resources or knowledge base to do it. There are some countries out there that do not mind this. In fact, they cooperate with this stuff. They like that it is going on in their countries. They are on the take, so to speak. They need to be called out for what they are doing as well.

Finally, it promotes accountability. It ensures that the Federal funds are being used for their intended purposes, and it reduces the authorization levels to address fiscal concerns but focuses on the programs that have been most effective.

My hope is that bill, which is a bipartisan bill, will come to this floor soon and that we will have an opportunity to make it better, to get it passed, and to work with our colleagues in the House to send a very clear message that this is a priority, that this is something we should all agree on and work on together. It is a great cause to be involved in. It is one of the great humanitarian, human rights causes of the 21st century, and I think how we deal with it or fail to deal with it will say a lot about us as a people and as a nation. I hope I can encourage as many of my colleagues as possible to take up this cause as their own. I look forward, in the weeks to come, to coming to the floor and talking more about it.

I yield the floor.

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