Research Paper on "Human Trafficking the State Department"

Research Paper 20 pages (6416 words) Sources: 20

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Within the text of the law itself, there is little description of these programs, and no provisions for funding. The law also includes provisions for the victims of trafficking. These include outlining the requirements to receive funding, definitions of trafficking victims, the production of the annual report, the investigation and prosecution of offenders and protections for victim, including clauses related to immigration status (TVPA, 1475-78). The law also sets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. These are the standards that are used in the annual report to grade other nations on their anti-trafficking legislative environment. The minimum standards are:

The prohibition of severe forms of trafficking

Mandatory severe punishment for those found guilty of sex trafficking

Severe punishment for other forms of severe trafficking

Serious and sustained efforts to eliminate severe trafficking (TVPA, 1480)

These four standards are intended as the floor of efforts, upon which governments are supposed to build consistently over time. This is because human trafficking is both a complex issue and one that remains emerging in international law. The crime itself is fluid, evolving to meet the needs of the market. Indeed, in some cases trafficking does not necessarily require moving across borders ("Trafficking in Persons Report 2010," 5). People are trafficked for forced labor in particular to meet economic demand. This can take place by overt means such as kidnapped or by subtler means such as coercion and exploitation. Often, victims begin with a people smuggling arrangement only to find themselv

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es in a human trafficking situation. Most victims are poor, coming from countries with weak legal infrastructures. They are valued for their labor and are smuggled to a place where that labor takes place. At times, they travel voluntarily at first, only to become trapped later. Because of the often economic nature of the crime, many victims in the latter category are migrants to the developed world, where they enter a form of bondage, often to pay for their journey. The high incidence of such scenarios highlights the need for greater and more effective laws regarding human trafficking, even in the developed world nations that currently receive high scores from the Secretary of State with respect to their efforts to combat human trafficking.

Beyond the TVPA and related acts, the laws governing human trafficking in the United States are often left to the individual states. Of considerable impact are laws concerning immigration. The United States Justice Department has had difficulty in the past ten years finding human trafficking cases to prosecute and one of the contributing issues to this problem is that victims are often reluctant to come forward. Although they are entitled to protections under TVPA, they are typically unaware of that fact and therefore reluctant to engage with local law enforcement agencies (Gonzalez, 2010). Arizona's immigration law -- which has inspired copycat state laws across the country -- is seen by human rights advocates as harming the cause of human trafficking. This of critical importance because Arizona is one of the main corridors for human trafficking into the United States, and the state has become a major corridor for illegal immigrants of all types entering the United States along the border with Mexico. Rights advocates argue that the Arizona immigration law effectively criminalizes human trafficking victim as a result of their lack of legal immigration status, regardless of how they came to be in the United States. The victims of human trafficking will be unsure of what rights they have and will have even more reason to be suspicious of law enforcement agencies in the state. This in turn will make it more difficult to uncover human trafficking rings and bring about more prosecutions (Kloer, 2010). Other state frameworks may be less oppressive than Arizona's towards illegal immigrants, but nevertheless the tenor of border states with respect to illegals is generally poor, which discourages trafficking victims from coming forward.

The European Union functions in a similar way to the United States. The EU as a whole is guided by a loose set of laws that includes guidelines for the establishment of jurisdiction and broad guidelines for the punishment of offenders, and has a continent-wide border patrol "Frontex," the laws with respect to the specific crimes that make up human trafficking vary between jurisdictions (Europa.eu, 2010). European nations work with neighboring countries to prevent instances of human trafficking. As an example, Italy has seen an influx of illegal immigrants from Tunisia in the wake that decreased patrols that have resulted from the recent political turmoil in that country (BBC, 2011). The Lampedusa case is similar to that of Arizona -- it highlights the need for not only comprehensive laws in the destination country, but also the necessity of cooperation from the countries that serve as jumping-off points. As a case in point, while Mexico is generally thought of as a source country for human trafficking, many of the illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border come from third-party countries (Hawley, 2010).

The United Nations has also attempted to tackle the issue of human trafficking, as the issue is multinational in scope and features many areas of concern in human rights and transnational crime. Written in 2000, the protocol is fully titled The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime. The underlying philosophy of the Protocol is that there was to that point an absence of international law regarding the issue. The protocol was written with two objectives in mind:

1. To prevent and combat trafficking in persons, paying particular attention to women and children;

2. To protect and assist the victims of such trafficking, with full respect for their human rights and;

3. To promote cooperation among states parties in order to meet those objectives. ("Palermo Protocol," 2000, 2)

Signatories to the protocol were expected to pass laws prohibiting human trafficking and to establish punishments for those convicted of the crime. The signatories were also encouraged to "consider implementing measures to provide for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims of trafficking in persons" (Ibid, 3). Within the text of the Palermo Protocol, there is no mechanism for ensuring that the signatories follow through on their promises, nor that the signatories enforce the laws that they enact.

Effectiveness of Current Policies

Individual national and sub-national laws typically contain specific punishment prescriptions for those engaged in human trafficking, just as they define the protections that victims of human trafficking will receive. There are several key issues with respect to the effectiveness of these laws. The first key issue is that the laws typically have no specific means by which to measure the effectiveness of the law. The second key issue is that the laws can be impacted by other laws enacted in areas with some overlap on the issue of human trafficking. The third important issue is that there are few mechanisms within international law to ensure compliance on the part of nations, even those that have signed the Palermo Protocol and especially those that have not.

Few countries even have reliable figures for the instances of human trafficking. In the United States and Europe, there are reasonably reliable estimates but with nearly 140 countries involved (at least) the fact that most nations have no idea how much human trafficking goes on inside and across their borders (Laczko & Gramegna, 2003, 181-82) makes it difficult to implement measures for the effectiveness of laws. An additional problem is that there is reluctance on the part of some countries to share the data than they have collected internally (Ibid, 185). Data collection is also made difficult by problems related to definitions and counting. Laczko Gramegna point out that sex trafficking statistics are often derived from estimates of foreign prostitutes, despite the fact that human trafficking is not restricted to foreigners and that not all prostitutes are victims of human trafficking (Ibid, 187). This lack of data, lack of willingness to share data, and lack of consistency between the few data sets that do exist and are share makes it difficult to measure the problem, much less the solution. Measuring the solution naturally requires an understanding of the starting point, followed by a statistical analysis of the current state of human trafficking after the enactment of a law. This cannot take place when reliable starting points do not exist, much less when there are no starting points or ending points. While there is considerable anecdotal evidence that can be gathered about the impact that the efforts governments are having, the lack of statistics hinders reliable analysis considerably.

The second major issue with respect to determining which strategies for dealing with human trafficking are effective is that the patchwork of laws sometimes results in laws that conflict with one another. This is a natural consequence of the issue being complex and overlapping with so many other legal issues. The Arizona example, where the local immigration policy appears to conflict with the… READ MORE

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Please include all information that will enable us to write the research material to meet your specifications. Please be as descriptive and detailed as possible. Don*****'t forget to include details about any minor example features, such as the minimum number of quotations, parenthetical citations, footnotes, etc. Remember, we are not responsible for including material that is not specified in this order form. If you have any articles, pages of text, notes, or other resources that may aid us in writing the custom research material, you can email to us such items, or fax to one of the numbers listed below.

Paper Topic:

The Border Dilemma:

Can current U.S. immigration policies manage the increased flow of human trafficking from Mexico?

Objective:

To discuss current U.S. policies on immigration and human trafficking, and whether any current policies are working, and what future policies will work, and how International Law has failed in its attempts to thwart the problem of human trafficking. I will also discuss the issue of human trafficking itself, and how it has become a global gold mine, specifically related to the increased numbers from Mexico to the United States.

1. What problem or issues are you going to investigate?

I am going to investigate how human trafficking from Mexico into the United States has increased significantly over the past decade and how both U.S. and Mexican governments must take urgent action to combat the abuse. Along with government enforcement of the law, the UN must provide a better framework to enforce international law on all parties involved. Human trafficking has become the third largest shadow economy after drugs and arms. Every year an increasing number of people fall victim of trafficking, mainly for sexual exploitation (43%), but many for underpaid illegal labor. Such trafficking is the modern form of slavery, which treats human beings as a commodity to be bought and sold, to be put to forced labor, usually in the sex industry, but also, for example in agriculture, households, declared or undeclared sweatshops, to be paid a pittance or nothing. The surge in human trafficking from Mexico into the U.S. coincides with a revolution in affordable transport and instant communication around the world……… i.e. Globalization. All of this has facilitated things like trade and services, yet it has also facilitated the trafficking of human beings.

2. Why does this topic merit being studied?

This topic merits being studied because human trafficking has emerged as a major global problem with serious implications for U.S. immigration policy and law enforcement, as well as the UN and the veil of International Law. It is indeed big business. Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative forms of crime worldwide after drug and arms trafficking. In Mexico, it is a $15 billion- to $20 billion-a-year endeavor, second only to drug trafficking.

3. How do this topic relate to the main concerns of the course?

This topic relates to our course because human trafficking is a perfect example of how International Law enforcement is being challenged every day in the global system. Like the global drug trade, human trafficking is a mammoth economic enterprise, providing traffickers with financial resources and technological capabilities to enhance and shield their activities from public scrutiny or interference. The U.S. Government must implement legal measures to protect and rescue victims of human trafficking, particularly the more vulnerable, who are usually women and children. Furthermore, until the area of International Law can combat the horrific crime of human trafficking, the legitimacy of International Law itself will always be questioned.

Format and Style Guidelines:

The general format and style guidelines for the research paper are as follows:

* 20 pages in length, or 6000 words

* Must be written in Times New Roman 12-point font.

* Must be double-spaced with a 1.25-inch left margin and 1-inch top, bottom and right margins.

* The documentation style utilized must be consistent throughout the paper....MLA will be used.

* Must include a separate title page and a works cited section.

This paper is meant to be primarily analytical in orientation and demand that you support your arguments with references and the provision of detailed practical examples.

* You are encouraged to provide informed but creative interpretations of the research paper topic.

* In the process, it is absolutely essential that the paper address each segment of the topic.

* The failure to do so WILL result in a substantial deduction in the final grade for the assignment.

Other Important Research Paper Information:

What Will Your Instructor Look for in Your Research Paper?

Elements are listed in order of importance.

Content

• Introduction clearly states the thesis or research question and identifies the main points of the paper.

• The body of the paper fully and conclusively examines the main points associated with the thesis/research question and is well balanced in coverage, in terms of breadth and depth.

• The conclusion summarizes the author's analysis in a clear and thoughtful manner.

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• The paper contains little or no irrelevant or extraneous material.

Logic, Focus, and Analysis

• The paper is analytically sound and uses evidence effectively to support the analysis and the conclusions.

• The analysis offers insightful connections to related topics and to course material.

• Generalizations about related topics and implications of the research are nuanced.

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Use of Sources and Evidence

• An adequate number of reliable sources are used.

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• Exact references are provided whenever appropriate.

• MLA citation style in both text notes and bibliography is adhered to.

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• Excellent transitions from point to point.

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• Clear, accurate, college-level English is used.

Format

• Paper follows all guidelines for length, margins, etc.

Some guidelines about research for papers

The Diplomacy Faculty has observed a few problems with students' research that seem to occur repeatedly. Therefore, it is suggested that students consider the following points in writing research papers. You will note that many of these are judgment calls, but that, overall, you are encouraged to be fairly rigorous about what sources you use, to submit online and media sources (often useful and valid) to a certain amount of critical scrutiny and to avoid using reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias except where there is no alternative academic source available. We are trying to encourage you to be more *****"scholarly*****" in your writing because: (a) it is a requirement of all good Master*****'s programs; and (b) we know that you are capable of doing so and this is a useful skill to develop both for this program and for your future endeavors.

1. Be careful about Internet sources. You ought to be highly skeptical about the reliability of reports on the Internet that are from an organization that does not have a credible track record. Admittedly this is a judgment call, if you are in doubt ask your professor. There are sources that do not clearly identify an author by name – sometimes this is acceptable if the documentation indicates it is by "the editors" or a Board of Advisors or a federal agency. If it is obviously a government site, or the site of a journal, the source is probably acceptable. The general rule is: do not rely upon any source for which the author and the date the document was written are not both available.

2. Any time you have a doubt about the reliability of a source, get second and third opinions. Find other sources to back up or disprove the initial source. If you end up with a dispute between sources that you must resolve for your paper, try to find some more sources. Whether you find more or not, decide which source makes the best case and explain your judgment in a footnote. If you don't need to resolve it, then that might mean you don't really need it in your paper after all.

3. Be judicious in how you use information from media sources (online or hardcopy). Examples include newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal); news magazines or weeklies (The Economist, Newsweek, Time) and online news sources such as MSNBC.COM or CNN.COM. If you are studying the role of the media or how the media covered an event, obviously it makes sense to rely heavily on media sources. Further, news reports can be cited to "prove" a fact-that a Prime Minister resigned after a certain period in office; that a President gave a speech on a particular subject on a given day (newspapers often print the transcripts of such speeches and thus can be cited as a source about what was said in the speech); that a village or government outpost was attacked on a given day; or that information about a particular event was or was not available in the media. News sources are not normally considered effective for credible analysis however.

If you are tempted to use media sources for more interpretative or analytical purposes, the best advice is: resist the urge. Look, instead, for more authoritative second and third sources such as academic journals available online through off-campus library access data bases (PROQUEST, JSTOR…), government and UN publications, books by scholars, and reports by established think tanks. If you think a media source provided useful, additional insight, include it in a footnote or incorporate it in the text with caveats such as: "According to an article by X in Newsweek…"or "Similar conclusions were reached by editors of The Economist…"

Remember, the media is not in the business of studying an issue in depth, but you are (at least while you are working on a research paper).

4. There are a number of monthly or biweekly publications that offer analytical articles by experts and academicians that are acceptable as research sources. Examples include: The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly.

5. Do not confuse editorials with "hard news". What a columnist in the Washington Post or what the editors of the Wall Street Journal say in a column is opinion. Even when the editorial includes facts, the editorial is not a good source for a research paper. For example, the Providence Journal may have run an editorial that included the per capita income of a country. A research paper ought to use a World Bank report or a US government report as the source for the per capita information, not the Providence Journal editorial.

6. Citing articles that are assigned in the seminar is fine for attribution purposes. To the extent that seminar readings are useful sources, they should be cited. However, one of the purposes of a research paper is for the student to demonstrate ability to conduct research, this means examining reports, an*****s and documents that were not assigned in the curriculum.

7. Standard general reference documents are acceptable sources for specific facts (a date of birth, the population of a city, the square mileage of country). However, using an encyclopedia or dictionary to document a specific fact does not constitute graduate level research.

8. If there is a general expectation that the student will consult a minimum number of sources, media sources and general reference documents used to document specific facts will not count toward that minimum.

Other guidance

Whenever you write certain phrases ("by numerous accounts…"; "according to some…"; "as they say…"; "there is agreement that…"; "experts do not agree that…"), documentation is required! You need to tell the reader who you are referring to, not necessarily everyone, but you do need to provide two or three references to demonstrate that you have grounds for describing what other peoples' views are. When you say; "Some authors say……." you are indicating more than one, so should your reference.

Do not rely upon books or articles written thirty years ago without first checking to see if there is more current scholarship on the topic.

Be careful about using an "old" document in a way that suggests it is a reference for current events. This could happen when there is a typo in the footnote (1970 instead of 1990) or when a footnote for a 1980 book is the sole source cited for a paragraph that covers information from the1970s as well as the 1990s.

An easy way to check spelling and word definitions without leaving your PC is the dictionary.com website.

will be emailing info to Mark Dee and/or the *****. I will also be sending the ***** two articles from the online library that must be in the paper. *****

How to Reference "Human Trafficking the State Department" Research Paper in a Bibliography

“Human Trafficking the State Department.” A1-TermPaper.com, 2011, https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/human-trafficking-state-department/6626031. Accessed 1 Jul 2024.

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A1-TermPaper.com. (2011). Human Trafficking the State Department. [online] Available at: https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/human-trafficking-state-department/6626031 [Accessed 1 Jul, 2024].

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[1] ”Human Trafficking the State Department”, A1-TermPaper.com, 2011. [Online]. Available: https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/human-trafficking-state-department/6626031. [Accessed: 1-Jul-2024].

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1. Human Trafficking the State Department. A1-TermPaper.com. https://www.a1-termpaper.com/topics/essay/human-trafficking-state-department/6626031. Published 2011. Accessed July 1, 2024.

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