Human trafficking is a type of criminal business in the United States that has become a national problem. The traffickers target the most vulnerable groups of the population, one of which is teenagers. The victims of such illegal activities are being exploited all over the country. The problem lies in the fact that it is almost impossible to reveal whether a person is acting on their initiative or has fallen victim to the threats of criminals.
The two principal types of criminal activity include child labor trafficking and sex trafficking, and both are difficult to identify due to the lack of assistance on the part of the victims. In both cases, the perpetrators use various tactics to entice them. They include psychological manipulation, financial exploitation, trickery, and some others so that a victim willingly follows the traffickers until it is too late to escape from the trap (Kaufka Walts, 2017). Therefore, the cases of human trafficking are more difficult to trace than any other type of criminal activity.
Child labor trafficking is the type of crime that is hard to identify as it does not seem to be suspicious from the start. Adolescents might have a job that is allowed by the government with consideration of all the conditions, such as the number of working hours and the type of activity. Due to the psychological pressure, they will never confess they are working illegally and in poor conditions (Kaufka Walts, 2017). Hence, one can never know for sure, whether teenage waiters in restaurants or workers in factories are being abused or work according to their own will.
In the case of labor trafficking, the victims fall into two categories. The first one consists of homeless children as they lack access to basic needs and services. The labor traffickers promise them food and shelter, and, as a result, make them work for free or pay very little. The second category includes foreign-born children moving to the United States with fraudulent visas or even unauthorized (Kaufka Walts, 2017). This group of immigrants is the most vulnerable to labor trafficking. These children are from low-income families, and they are promised decent working conditions abroad. They cannot escape due to the constant threats to their families and the illegality of their presence on the territory of the United States.
As for sex trafficking, this type is prevalent to the labor one. According to statistics, 33% of children get into this kind of dependence against 16% for labor trafficking (Kaufka Walts, 2017, p.60). There is a row of manipulative methods the traffickers use to gain control over their victims. First, they offer support and love to the minors who do not get that from their families. Once a child starts to trust the trafficker, they are engaged in prostitution and have to obey (“Child sex trafficking,” 2017).
Otherwise, the child is being abused and beaten by the trafficker, so they have to pretend that everything is fine. The children cannot escape as they rarely can identify their traffickers due to the lack of information about them and risk ending up in even worse conditions once they are caught again.
Human trafficking, both sex and labor, has become a modern type of slavery in the United States. The difficulty to define the crime and find the perpetrator leads to the stalemate, from which a child cannot escape. Most frequently, these children are believed to be criminals, but this situation does not lead to the solution of the problem. Thus, new measures to eliminate this sort of crime should be developed.
References
Kaufka Walts, K. (2017). Child labor trafficking in the United States: A hidden crime. Social Inclusion (ISSN: 2183–2803), 5(2), 59-68.
Child sex trafficking. (2017). Web.