222, MARKUP OF H.R. 3244, H.CON.RES. 165, H.RES. 169, H.CON.RES. 206, H.CON.RES. H.CON.RES. 211, AND H.CON.RES. 200 Tuesday, November 9, 1999 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, WASHINGTON, D.C. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 4 p.m., in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman (Chairman of the Committee) presiding. Chairman GILMAN. The Committee will come to order-Members please take their seats-pursuant to notice to mark up several items of legislative business. First item is H.R. 3244 relating to trafficking in humans. The clerk will report the title of the bill. [The information referred to appears in the appendix.] Ms. BLOOMER. H.R. 3244, a bill to combat trafficking of persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery and slavery-like conditions in the United States and countries around the world through prevention, through prosecution and enforcement against traffickers and through protection and assistance to victims of trafficking. Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, the first reading of the bill is dispensed with. The clerk will read the bill for amendment. Ms. BLOOMER. Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. Section 1, Short title. Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, the bill is considered as having been read and is open to amendment at any point. I now recognize the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Smith to introduce the bill. Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that the Committee is meeting today to markup H.R. 3244, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 1999, which I introduced yesterday along with the Ranking Member, Mr. Gejdenson, and seven other bipartisan cosponsors. This bill focuses on the most severe forms of trafficking, on trafficking of children into the international sex industry, on sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and on trafficking into slavery and slavery-like practices. Each year, Mr. Chairman, up to a million innocent victims, of whom the overwhelming majority are women and children, are brought by force and/or fraud into the international commercial sex industry. Efforts by the U.S. Government, international organiza (1) tions, and others to stop this brutal practice have thus far proved unsuccessful. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that instances of forcible and/ or fraudulent sexual trafficking are far more numerous than just a few years ago. The problem, Mr. Chairman, is not abstract. It shatters the lives of real women and children. In Russia, for example, traffickers prey on orphanages. In a typical scenario, a trafficker will pay an orphanage director approximately $12,000 to take a group of children on a field trip to a local McDonalds, for example. Groups of children will then leave the orphanage with the trafficker, never to be seen or heard from again. It has been estimated by one leader of an NGO that approximately $24,000-that is the going price, Mr. Chairman, $24,000 per woman, who is trafficked into the United States or some other country. The problem is not just overseas. According to investigative reports I have received in the tristate area, including my home State of New Jersey, there are thousands of women involuntarily working. These are women who came to the United States in response to advertisements for reputable jobs such as waitresses, housekeepers, nannies and the like. They were provided passports and visas and transported to the United States. When they arrived in the U.S., they were told that the jobs had already been filled, but they were still indebted for the costs of the trip, anywhere from $15,000- to $40,000. Many of these helpless women have been forced to work as prostitutes until they pay off their debts. Part of the problem is that current laws and law enforcement strategies in the U.S., as well as in other nations, often punish the victims more severely than they punish the perpetrators. When a sex-for-hire establishment is raided, the women, and sometimes children, in the brothel are typically deported if they are not citizens of the country in which the establishment is located, without reference to whether their participation was voluntary or involuntary and without reference to whether they will face retribution or other serious harm upon return. This not only inflicts further cruelty on the victims, it also robsleaves nobody, I should say, to testify against the real criminals and frightens other victims from coming forward. My original bill, Mr. Chairman, introduced along with our colleague, Marcy Kaptur, focused only on sex trafficking because we believe this is the most egregious and the fastest growing form of trafficking of persons, and because we wanted to include tough penalties against traffickers and against governments that are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. At the strong suggestion of Mr. Gejdenson, the new bill recognizes that there are other forms of trafficking, such as trafficking into literal slavery or into forms of indentured servitude that amount to slavery, and in which trafficked women are often subjected to brutal treatment, including rape, that call for the same tough approach toward traffickers and the same compassion for the victims. H.R. 3244 punishes, and I quote, "severe forms of trafficking in persons," which are defined as sex trafficking with children, sex trafficking induced by force, fraud, or coercion, and trafficking of persons into involuntary servitude or slave-like conditions by force, fraud, or coercion. This legislation seeks the elimination of these gross human rights violations by a comprehensive, balanced approach of prevention, prosecution and enforcement and victim protection. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act modifies U.S. criminal law to provide severe punishment for persons convicted of severe forms of trafficking in persons. This includes those who recruit, transport, purchase and sell victims, as well as those who manage or share in the proceeds of the trafficking enterprises. It directs the State Department to include in its annual country reports on human rights information regarding countries involved in severe forms of trafficking and the extent to which their governments are involved in combating or tolerating such trafficking. It creates a statutory interagency task force to monitor and combat trafficking, which is similar to the interagency approach the Administration has already taken. It also authorizes the establishment of a State Department office to monitor and combat trafficking, which will provide assistance to the task force. It directs the President to establish preventive programs aimed at deterring trafficking by enhancing economic opportunities for potential trafficking victims and increasing public awareness of the dangers of trafficking and the protections that are available to victims. It provides increased protection and assistance for victims of severe forms of trafficking, both in the U.S. and abroad, by funding assistance initiatives and protecting certain victims from being deported from the U.S. if they are likely to suffer retribution or other harm. The bill establishes minimum standards for countries that have significant trafficking problems. These governments should punish these egregious forms of trafficking for what they are kidnapping, rape, slavery—and they should vigorously prosecute the kidnappers and rapists and slave traders. The bill then authorizes AID to fund activities designed to help countries meet those standards, such as rewriting their laws and training their police and prosecutors. The bill also requires that the President, beginning in the Year 2002, either withhold nonhumanitarian foreign assistance to governments that fail to meet the minimal standards, or to waive that prohibition if he finds that providing such assistance is in the national interests of the United States. So this is not a carrots-only approach, which is what the Administration seems to favor. We have carefully calibrated this approach which ultimately leaves it up to the President to decide whether to withdraw the nonhumanitarian aid, even from governments that absolutely refuse to do anything about trafficking. But the President would have to at least address the problem once a year. The government would have to produce a list of governments that do not meet the minimal standards, and if the President explains why he wanted to keep the funding of these governments, he would have to say so in black and white. This would have the effect of putting the fight against the international slave trade at the top of our foreign policy agenda where it belongs. Finally, the bill authorizes the State Department to publish a list of foreign persons involved with severe forms of trafficking and allows the President to impose economic sanctions against those per sons. Mr. Chairman, the Administration has been very critical of the original Smith-Kaptur Bill, and in drafting the new bill, we have tried to meet as many of their concerns as possible. Despite the many concessions we have made, I understand that the Administration still opposes the bill based on what they erroneously call "mandatory sanctions." Let me be clear about what this bill does and what it doesn't do: It contains no trade sanctions and no mandatory sanctions at all. It provides for waiverable conditionality on nonhumanitarian U.S. foreign assistance for governments that fail to meet minimal standards in fighting organized crime enterprises that subject women and children to unspeakable horrors. The State Department has argued that what the problem governments need is advance notice and assistance in order to address these complex problems, but this bill takes that concern into account as well. It authorizes AID to assist countries in their efforts to meet minimal standards and delays the conditionality on nonhumanitarian foreign aid for 2 years, until the Year 2000. Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr. SMITH. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do want to thank my many cosponsors, including again Mr. Gejdenson, Ms. Kaptur, Louise Slaughter, the Ranking Member of our Subcommittee, Cynthia McKinney, and all the original cosponsors, for their support for this legislation. Chairman GILMAN. I thank the gentleman. I want to commend the gentleman from New Jersey, the distinguished Chairman of our International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee, Mr. Smith, and the Ranking Minority Member of that Subcommittee, Congresswoman McKinney, for their excellent work on their Traf ficking Victims Protection Act. In addition, I want to thank the Ranking Minority Member of our Full Committee, Mr. Gejdenson, for his work on this important measure. There are few things in this world that are as demoralizing or degrading to the humor spirit as having to sell one's body or one's child in order to survive. Čriminals who initiate or help to facilitate such transactions are at the lowest end of the human spectrum. H.R. 3244 will help to end the trafficking of persons into the sex trade and into the slavery-like conditions by requiring various important governmentwide action, such as requiring our President to establish an interagency task force to monitor and combat trafficking, chaired by the Secretary of State and requiring the Secretary of State to report to Congress annually on the status of severe forms of trafficking, beginning in Fiscal Year 2002 for each country that fails to meet the minimal standards. The President is going to have to notify Congress about the steps that we are taking to adequately respond. The bill authorizes the Secretary of State to compile and publish a list of foreign persons involved with a severe form of trafficking in persons, directly or indirectly, in the United States and to take appropriate action. H.R. 3244 further allows the President to impose international emer gency economic powers, IEEPA, sanctions against any foreign person on that list and requires that he report to Congress any such sanctions. In closing, I note that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act is an important initiative that will help put an end to the serious problem and must be boldly addressed with no holds barred. I commend the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights for their work, and I urge my colleagues to support the bill. I recognize the gentleman from Connecticut, the Ranking Minority Member, Mr. Gejdenson. Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I would like to first commend both Mr. Smith's staff and my staff Joseph Rees on his staff and Aletea Gordon, David Abramowitz, and Peter Yeo on my staff for the great work they have done here, coming up with what I think is a terrific product. Obviously, at least this Member of Congress, when I got here, never thought that as we approached the millennium we would have a situation where even in the United States tens of thousands of women and children are trafficked regularly. Only occasionally do those stories of MexicanAmericans brutalized, years of selling trinkets on the streets of our major cities, make the papers. Trafficking of any kind is something that clearly should have ended long ago. I really want to commend my colleague, Mr. Smith from New Jersey, for his cooperation in working out the language on this bill. There was never a debate on the goals-we all agreed on what we wanted to do the questions was on how to best get there, and I think the staff has done an excellent job providing broad prosecution and enforcement provisions in this bill to make sure that every kind of trafficking is dealt with. Obviously we are not done here today; this is going to take some time with the other countries of the world. But it is clearly something that is very important. Again, I want to thank all the staff, but particularly Alethea Gordon of my staff for the great work she has done on this. Thank you. Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gejdenson. Mr. Bereuter. Mr. BEREUTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While I certainly support the worthy cause of this legislation and do not want to vote against it, and will not-it is important, of course, to help stop the sex trade trafficking and slavery to prosecute those engaged in such reprehensible actions and assist the innocent victims of those crimes-I raise concerns about the funding of this new foreign policy priority. What are we going to cut to fund the extensive aid and administrative provisions in this bill? The bill authorizes $31.5 million in Fiscal Year 2000, $63 million in Fiscal Year 2001-that is $94.5 million over the next 2 years. Now, all too often in the past, the financial support for new initiatives of this kind has come from reducing agriculture and food aid. Since the beginning of the Clinton Administration, Public Law 480 food aid funding has decreased about a half-billion dollarsthis at a time when America's farms are facing crisis and food needs around the world continue to be acute. For all of the Administration's claims to feel the pain of Nebraskans and other Amer |