LITR 5731 Multicultural: Immigrant Literature UHCL model assignments

LITR 5731 Seminar in Multicultural Literature:

American Immigrant: model assignments

2010 research post 1

Ellen Kirby

The Dream Becomes the Nightmare: Contemporary Slavery

Last year, I went to a luncheon where the founding members of Home of Hope, Houston, talked about the slave trade in Houston. They are working to build a rehabilitation home for sexual slavery victims here, because Houston is an important destination point and distribution hub for traffickers. I have been haunted by this information periodically, but have never done anything. It’s easy to feel a sort of gut-punched sickness and flare with righteous fury, but then what? When we were talking about slavery in class, it brought to mind the Home of Hope presentation. It seems that experiences of victims enslaved by after being promised a better life in America connect to Objective 2, variations on the Immigrant Narrative, and Objective 3, the interplay between Immigrant and Minority Narrative. So the research question started as “What is the contemporary slave trade like with regard to immigrants,” and has become “If these girls are rescued, do they have a shot at the American Dream?” The most fundamental question is “what can be done?” This post is, in part, an attempt to learn what can meaningfully be done to change the situation.

I started by locating the business card I got at the luncheon. Through it, I found the Home of Hope website and read through the statistics page: http://homeofhopetexas.com/Stats.htm

There are things that the mind shies away from, slips sideways to avoid, that we forget because they are so dreadful we want to unknow them. Slavery is like that, and may always have been. So I’m not going to paraphrase this quote, just give it to you:

Slavery exists in the world today for 27 million held in some form of captivity. 80% of them are women; 50% are underage children and 70% of the females are trafficked for sexual exploitation purposes. These are not prostitutes. These are women and girls that are being prostituted. . . .

Sex traffickers use a variety of methods to “condition” their victims including starvation, confinement, beatings, physical abuse, gang rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims’ families, forced drug use and threat of shaming their victims by revealing their activities to their family and their family’s friends.

And often, this happens in Houston.

Everywhere I looked, I saw people saying Houston is one of the most important trafficking cities in the country: “Houston has become the American hub for human trafficking,” Sanborn said. “Girls from abroad and girls from the United States are brought to Houston, and it's here that they are beaten and raped and drugged into submission before being sent to clandestine bordellos all over the country." (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6626053.html)

Breathe.

It helps that, sprinkled among those reports, one often sees Texas was the first state to have anti-trafficking laws, and those laws are being strengthened as time goes on.

As I went through the archives at www.chron.com the Houston Chronicle website, I saw several cases in which Latina girls were brought to the US believing there would be legitimate work when they arrived. In the terms of our course, the girls embarked on the Immigrant Narrative, only to have it become the Minority narrative; the American Dream became American Nightmare. For those few girls rescued, however, that nightmare is not the end of the story. According to the Houston Chronicle, Immigration and Customs Enforcement took charge of one girl and put her in foster care. Another was held as a material witness, which allowed her to stay in the United States. How do their stories play out?

In 2002, the United States created the T-Visa, which gives victims of severe trafficking a protected, non-immigrant status and allows for the possibility of becoming a US citizen. Some people may make it back to the Immigrant Narrative after all. Still, just reading the details at http://www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/obtainlpr/oblpr071.htm shows some significant challenges for victims. The laws are written as if applicants for the T-Visa have a safe place to be, and posses the linguistic, social, financial and psychological wherewithal to navigate the legal system. For this legislation to be effective, there must be citizens helping these victims, especially since only 5,000 T-Visas can be granted each year.

Still, I read one hopeful story about a woman trafficked in from Guatemala to Clearwater, TX. The Clearwater police, with the help of a federal grant, were able to bust the operation. The woman received help, and is living somewhere in the South. Perhaps, after the nightmare, she can heal and hope; perhaps she can even win the dream. (http://www.jammedlibrary.blogspot.com/)

The answer to my first question: Women come to America searching for a better life; in Houston, they are stolen from themselves and sold as merchandise. Sometimes, law enforcement is able to bust the pimps/slave-owners, and the women are freed from their nightmare. I plan to follow up on the question of “what happens afterward” for my second post. I’ve already e-mailed Home of Hope, and will e-mail more organizations to find out about what happens to those set free, and what can be done to help.

Houston Anti-Slavery Organizations

http://homeofhopetexas.com/Stats.htm

http://www.houstonrr.org/

http://www.freethecaptiveshouston.com/

National/Global Anti-Slavery and Refugee Organizations

http://www.ijm.org/

http://www.thehomefoundation.net/

http://worldrelief.org/us

For more on T-Visas: http://vaw.umn.edu/documents/humantrafficking/humantrafficking.pdf

For more on US Laws:

http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2004/

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2002/January/02_crt_038.htm