According to statistics from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, North Carolina is the ninth-highest state in the U.S. for human trafficking cases.
Gov. Roy Cooper led the way for his political peers by extending the proclamation from President Joe Biden to make January “Human Trafficking Prevention Month.”
Out of this proclamation, human trafficking prevention and protection received financial attention from the government. From this attention, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina was able to create a new task force created to punish traffickers.
This task force will be centralized mainly in the Raleigh-Cary area and will work with three prosecutorial offices and 11 law enforcement agencies to collaborate and streamline successful tools to eliminate trafficking.
Although this task force is a solid step for North Carolina as a whole, more efforts need to be taken to scourge the bloody stain of human trafficking out of our state. That being said, many people have many brilliant ideas to stop human trafficking.
For example, Project No Rest is an initiative created by the NC government to increase awareness about sex trafficking. This project aims to reduce human trafficking by improving education centered around human trafficking. However, prevention should only be the first step. To end all forms of human trafficking, we have to target the causes of human trafficking.
The largest predictor of human trafficking stems from immigration status. Immigrant men and women constitute 72% of U.S. human trafficking victims. Due to their immigrant status, they are highly vulnerable to human traffickers. Many immigrants do not understand the language, let alone the laws created to protect them. They are often threatened with deportation if they do not have a job.
To protect immigrants without permanent legal status from being victims of coerced labor, there needs to be more laws and programs that aim to grant them their status as citizens, while allowing an extension of their stay in the U.S. to incentivize them to report to authorities.
A solution would be found in a reformation of the T-visa, which is a temporary immigration benefit given to immigrants who are victims of human trafficking. It allows a four-year extension of their stay if they comply in the prosecution of human traffickers. It’s essentially a temporary green card given to those who help to stop human trafficking.
Although it is an excellent idea to have a form of protection for illegal immigrants from human traffickers, there are too many negatives that come from the current system. For example, the system is capped at 5,000 visas per year, thus limiting the effectiveness of the program.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services also allows “Notice to Appear” for those denied this visa, making them easy targets for removal. This sign wouldn’t be as bad if the denial rate of applicants for T-visas wasn’t at an outstanding 38% as of 2021.
The T-visa system is a great idea. Offering a reward for an act that would be largely beneficial to society at the price of one’s legal status in the country is an extraordinary deal for the U.S. However, we must offer safety for informants.
As it currently stands, the desire for immigrants to apply for a T-visa is not proportionate to the risks involved in reporting their abusers. A reformation is needed, and they should target the issues of the current program which denies legal status in the U.S. so easily.
To facilitate a more representative response, the Department of Health and Human Services should be more involved in T-visa cases in North Carolina and throughout the country.
For a long time, the U.S. has used homeland security to conduct the interview processes to grant the T-visa. However, this department does not fully understand what to look for. The DHHS, on the other hand, has more professionals who fully understand how the victim may act versus those attempting fraud.
North Carolinians, as well as all U.S. citizens, should be hopeful. There has been a considerable amount of effort and legislation that has been put into place under the current regime.
At the state level, a considerable amount of work has been done under the new task force, and funding has increased in counties like Cabarrus county to aid them. At the national level, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was created under the current presidency to essentially stop the importation of goods from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region of China, a hotspot for human trafficking.
These laws display to U.S. citizens that the issues of human trafficking are essential to the current administration and offer North Carolinians hope for the end of this long-standing issue that hampers the legacy of our state.
