We need to educate ourselves.....try this Q and A, you will be surprise that slave owners, human traffickers are in your neighborhood.
When slave owners become subject to criminal prosecution, they usually cloak their activity in a number of falsehoods. IJM has created a handout that aims to straighten out the record. It lists the most common rationalizations that slave owners have used and counters those falsehoods with the truth. The following list is paraphrased from the handout:
Falsehood: “My loan helped these people in an emergency.”Truth: While the initial loan may have brought immediate relief, forced labor puts them in a far more vulnerable position. Because the victims are paid very low wages and are often charged high interest rates, they are never able to repay the lender and may suffer a lifetime for a single loan.
Falsehood: “The worker asked me for the advance.”
Truth: Whether or not workers wanted an advance, the employer cannot take away their freedom.
Falsehood: “If it weren’t for me, these people would be homeless.”
Truth: The provision of housing, which is often substandard, does not mitigate the injustice of enslaving victims. Moreover, relevant law states that freed laborers are not to be evicted from their homes.
Falsehood: “If you release these people, they’ll be jobless.”
Truth: In addition to the rehabilitation to which victims are entitled upon release, they are freed from debt, removed from an abusive labor situation, and allowed to find a better source of income.
Falsehood: “If I’m not repaid for the loans I gave, I’ll lose a substantial amount of money.”
Truth: Because the loan was illegal in the first place, it is null and void. To accept payment on such a loan is to be subject to criminal penalty. Regardless, in most cases victims have repaid the loans multiple times over, and the owner has already made astounding profits on the loan.
Falsehood: “The industry would fail if it couldn’t use forced labor.”
Truth: Fair labor practices are necessary for legal, moral, and economic reasons. It is true that the cost of eradicating slavery might be borne largely by wealthy classes. But it will also lead to the modernization of industry practices and may boost the country’s economic progress.
Falsehood: “The workers are free to go if they pay the advance first.”
Truth: Relevant law specifically prohibits employers from preventing individuals from pursuing employment elsewhere. An inability or unwillingness to repay an advance does not abrogate that right.
Falsehood: “You are just picking on my operation. Every other business in the industry does the same thing.”
Truth: The law is binding. An industry’s failure to follow the law does not give any employer the license to deny workers their fundamental rights.
Falsehood: “Brokers brought me these people. I didn’t know how they were paid or what freedoms they had.”
Truth: The law assumes that those in charge of a company know its operations. On that basis, the law deems those in charge of a company guilty when an offense occurs, regardless of their personal knowledge.
Falsehood: “No one will work if I don’t give them cash advances.”
Truth: Advances are not illegal. The issue is whether or not the laborers are forced to work.
Falsehood: “Even if the law says the advance must be canceled, the workers still have a moral obligation to repay the debt.”
Truth: As well as having no legal obligation to pay the debt, laborers have no moral obligation. A moral obligation cannot arise from an immoral act.
:: Excerpt from “Not For Sale: Return of the Global Slave Trade” by David Batstone ::
