Pipeline to Peril
According to The Chicago Tribune
American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor, mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way in Iraq with little protection.
There is an interesting analysis of the extent of the legal problems with "human trafficking" in the Trans-National Crimes Blog
According to Interpol, trafficking in persons and human smuggling are two distinct phenomena. Trafficking in persons involves the exploitation of the migrant, “often for purposes of forced labour and prostitution,” whereas human smuggling “while odious in its own right,” is focused only on “the procurement, for financial or material gain, of the illegal entry into a state of which that person is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident.” ... It isn’t clear that the United States necessarily delineates the two categories.
Now, according to Trans-National Crimes Blog it would seem that:
The State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons—along with other State Department officials in South Asia and the Middle East, and the Department of Defense—will investigate “alleged abuses of workers who are part of an undocumented pipeline used to deliver thousands of Asians to labor on U.S. military bases in Iraq".
I'd love to think this was true, but I can't find any link to this story on the official US Department of State website.
If anyone can help me link up with the official story I'd be very grateful
Tags: transnational crimes new cold war iraq pipeline to peril human trafficking human rights