The 2011 Department of Justice Human Trafficking Report has recently been released. It provides country by country profiles of human trafficking and slavery for every country on the planet, and ranks them according to the level of effort given by governments to control the problem of human trafficking and slavery. There are four levels, Tier 1 being the highest (proactive effort) and Tier 3 being the lowest (no effort at all). Naturally, the United States, the author of the report and the creator of the ranking system, ranks at Tier 1.

The report, though, bluntly describes the situation of human trafficking and slavery in the US:

“The United States is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, document servitude, and sex trafficking. Trafficking occurs for commercial sexual exploitation in street prostitution, massage parlors, and brothels, and for labor in domestic service, agriculture, manufacturing, janitorial services, hotel services, hospitality industries, construction, health and elder care, and strip club dancing. Vulnerabilities are increasingly found in visa programs for legally documented students and temporary workers who typically fill labor needs in the hospitality, landscaping, construction, food service, and agricultural industries. There are allegations of domestic workers, foreign nationals on A-3 and G-5 visas, subjected to forced labor by foreign diplomatic or consular personnel posted to the United States. Combined federal and state human trafficking information indicates more sex trafficking than labor trafficking investigations and prosecutions, but law enforcement identified a comparatively higher number of labor trafficking victims as such cases uncovered recently have involved more victims. U.S. citizen victims, both adults and children, are predominantly found in sex trafficking; U.S. citizen child victims are often runaways, troubled, and homeless youth. Foreign victims are more often found in labor trafficking than sex trafficking. In 2010, the number of female foreign victims of labor trafficking served through victim services programs increased compared with 2009. The top countries of origin for foreign victims in FY 2010 were Thailand, India, Mexico, Philippines, Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic.”

Human trafficking is a global market. Some countries supply modern day slaves and some countries demand their services and profit off the buying and selling of human beings. Clearly, developed countries with their vast financial resources and demand for cheap labor facilitate human trafficking by expanding markets for sex work, domestic servants, construction and agriculture. Until the US is willing to drop conversations on “illegal immigrants” and start facing the real questions of wage slavery and human exploitation, the situation will never change.

Included is a map of country rankings worldwide, which I have posted up to the left. It would have been helpful to include a map of estimated numbers of people enslaved in each country as well, but this obviously would not bode well for developed nations nor for the citizens which are complicit in insuring that more people are enslaved in the 21st century than in any other time in human history.