The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking in out Backyard

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Most Americans when they hear about the crime of human trafficking they automatically refer it to sex exploitation by big time gang organizations. Sexual exploitation is a big chunk of the trafficking problem in America but in reading the book The Slave Next Door you can see that there are different types of work for human trafficking. One of the unique and underrated types of trafficking is in the type of domestic slavery. This type of trafficking is not as popular for gangs and other trafficking organizations because it is more along the lines of saving money than making money. The story in The Slave Next Door of Ruth the 52 year old West-African woman who now lives in Washington D.C. and is a slave to a family; her chores are long and tedious and other than her short naps and small meal breaks she works 24 hours a day.
Another underrated but a bit more acknowledged type of trafficking is field labor, mostly in southeast Florida where slaves are forced to work in tomato fields and pick them. One of the worst jobs to have on these fields is being a “picker”, with long hours bent over in the southern sun and making little to no money these workers do not have much to look forward to. the only upside to their work is short and scarce lunch breaks and the minimal dirty water breaks they have throughout the day. These workers had no insurance or healthcare so when they got sick they continued to work, a quote from a former picker was “we worked until we were half dead then sent to the hospital”. Farm Labor trafficking is within the same premise as the domestic worker line. The owners of the farm wants to get the product out into the market faster but does not want to have to spend more money to hire workers to do the grueling jobs....

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