At any given time, the U.S. Congress is working on legislation that would affect human trafficking from any number of angles. Polaris is active in coalitions supporting both structural overhauls of major systems, such as temporary work visas, and on individual, trafficking-specific bills.
Overhaul Temporary Work Visas
A bipartisan group of lawmakers once again introduced the Visa Transparency Anti-Trafficking Act. This common-sense legislation is aimed at the system of temporary work visas, which is poorly designed and rife with trafficking and exploitation. This bill would give researchers, workers and NGOs more of the information necessary to keep traffickers from gaming the system.
Domestic Workers Bill of Rights
Domestic workers comprise the highest number of victims of labor trafficking reported to the U.S.National Human Trafficking Hotline. This important legislation would go a long way toward providing these vital members of our economy the same protections as other members of the U.S. workforce. That alone would go a long way toward reducing trafficking of nannies, housekeepers, and others who work in our homes.
Support for Survivors
According to the best available research, virtually all survivors have some kind of criminal record as a direct result of their being sex or labor trafficked. Many states have begun to recognize the hypocrisy inherent in these records as well as the problems having a record poses for survivors seeking to heal and start over. But for inexplicable reasons, the U.S. Department of Justice has cut off a program that helped human trafficking survivors get legal representation and clear their criminal records. That’s bad policy and a bad message to send to survivors.