With around 21 million people involved in the forced labor trade (ILO), most of them are often immigrants being told they will have better lives for them and their families. An example of this is the Thai laborers who were brought into the United States to clean up the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. Those workers were told that if they sign over their land, that they will earn around minimum wage and have a place to live in America. However, those workers were paid nothing and were forced to live in rotten and hazardous buildings in the very wreckage they were sent to clean up. These people weren't "purchased" but they were treated as if they had signed themselves over to the company, Manpower, Inc. (Hepburn and Simon 6). This is where the problem in the United States arises, this line of labor and slavery, by taking advantage of people who are foreign and often illegal aliens, makes up most of the forced labor trade of human trafficking. The other half of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, is what people often think of when discussing human trafficking. This side of human trafficking is often shown on television shows, movies, or written about in books, which is why the number of people involved in human trafficking is so shocking. Kaye, Winterdyk, and Quarterman performed a survey on an Alberta anti-trafficking unit. Out of the 54 people questioned in the survey, 56% had not come into contact with an actual trafficked persons. This shows the inexperience and lack of knowledge about trafficking, if more than half an anti-trafficking unit hasn't seen a trafficked person then the general public is going to be a lot higher (Kaye, Winterdyk, and Quarterman). By understand the problem, people can better understand and enforce the solution.
Human trafficking is not something that can be solved overnight, rather, it is something that can be shrunken down. In the past, the United States has approached trafficking by creating awareness and trying to limit travel to unsafe places.
