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USIS Washington 
File

28 April 1998

TEXT: DAS WINER REMARKS ON TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN AND CHILDREN

(In Vienna 4/27 Winer also discusses alien smuggling) (3580)



Vienna -- Jonathan Winer, deputy assistant secretary of state for law
enforcement and crime in the State Department's Bureau for
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, spoke here April 27 on
efforts to curb the smuggling of illegal aliens and the trafficking in
women and children.


Winer spoke to an audience of Austrian government officials and
representatives of non-government and international organizations
attending the Amerika Haus Forum on Transnational Crimes, sponsored in
cooperation with United Nations systems organizations in Vienna.


Several hundred thousand illegal migrants are moved by international
criminal smuggling syndicates from their countries of origin to
Western Europe and the United States alone, Winer said, noting that
according to UN estimates, Chinese smugglers alone earn up to $3.5
billion annually in this evil trade.


"Trafficking organizations operate with near impunity, as alien
smuggling is a crime in only a few recipient countries and penalties
are minimal," he said.


And while some believe it is a victimless crime, "the reality is that
migrants are often subjected to inhumane or dangerous treatment and in
the case of the Chinese especially, to extreme forms of violence.
Migrants die from suffocation, abandonment, accidents, or brutality by
smugglers."


Winer suggested ways to target the main players and elements in the
alien smuggling business, such as corrupt officials, weak
institutions, counterfeit documents, and ports of entry.


He pointed out that the United States has made changes in its laws and
policies over the past five years. "We have changed our immigration
and asylum procedures to increase criminal penalties for alien
smuggling and to make it easier to send those who have come to our
country illegally back to their homes."


The United States is also working with the European Union, the
International Organization of Migration, the United Nations, and other
organizations "to develop international cooperation against the
traffickers, whose organizations transcend all of our national
borders, because in a transnational world, no country can defend its
own borders or its people, however big or small, without the
cooperation of the entire world," Winer said.


Following is the text of Winer's remarks:



(Note: In the following text, "billion" equals 1,000 million.)



(Begin text)



ORGANIZED CRIME: SMUGGLING OF ILLEGAL ALIENS AND TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN
AND CHILDREN
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan M. Winer

April 27, 1998

Amerika Haus

Vienna



The Nature of Alien Smuggling



The push and pull of migration has always been with us, driven by
political, social and economic factors as old as human history. One of
my grandfathers came to the United States from Kiev as an infant,
hidden from immigration officials in a potato sack. To this day, the
affluence of the United States, like that of the European Union
countries, remains a tremendous draw for people all over the world
seeking opportunity. But there is a difference between the Ellis
Island "give me your huddled masses" immigration of the past and
today's alien smuggling epidemic. And the difference is the evolution
of illegal migration into a business, the smuggling of persons, that
simultaneously violates the human rights of the smuggled and corrupts
basic governmental institutions wherever they transit.


How big a problem is trafficking in illegal migrants? Our estimates
are that each year easily several hundred thousand illegal migrants
are being moved by international criminal smuggling syndicates from
their countries of origin to Western Europe and the United States
alone.


How much money is involved? United Nations studies have estimated that
Chinese smugglers alone earn up to $3.5 billion annually. Nearly
standard fees for various nationalities range from a few hundred
dollars for Central American up to $35,000 to $40,000 for Chinese. A
down payment is normally made before departure, with the remainder due
to the smugglers upon completion of the journey. Funds come primarily
from persons in developed countries -- either relatives or prospective
employers -- and repayment is made by the migrant by working, often in
sweatshop conditions, from criminal activities, or on some occasions
the migrants may be held for ransom by criminal gangs.


Trafficking organizations operate with near impunity, as alien
smuggling is a crime in only a few recipient countries and penalties
are minimal. In Central America, for example, alien smugglers have
until recently operated openly, since only Honduras and Panama had
anti-smuggling laws in place. The same has been true in Central and
Eastern Europe and in the Newly Independent States. These countries
understand the need to improve training, enact anti-smuggling
legislation or amend existing statutes, and to cooperate with other
governments, especially destination countries, in order to stem the
tide of illegal migration to and through their lands. In some areas,
such as Western Europe and Southeast Asia, the same criminal
organizations may traffic in migrants and narcotics. In other areas,
alien smugglers avoid other criminal activities, such as drug
trafficking, for which they would risk prosecution and stiff
penalties.


Alien smuggling is made possible by staggering levels of official
corruption. In Belize, the director and deputy director of migration
were arrested for corruption involving alien smuggling; immigration
directors in Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic were
replaced for the same reason. The United States is not immune from
corruption. Our most senior immigration official in Central America,
Jerry Stuchiner, pled guilty in the summer of 1996 to charges in
connection with a passport and visa scheme he was working between
Honduras and Hong Kong.


Poorly trained and paid immigration inspectors and border guards are
easily bribed to assist smuggled aliens who are "only passing
through." As alien smuggling organizations are ethnically based,
migrants then disappear into ethnic communities. Some law enforcement
authorities are reluctant to dedicate resources to alien smuggling
cases because they perceive alien smuggling as a victimless crime.
Unfortunately, the reality is that migrants are often subjected to
inhumane or dangerous treatment and in the case of the Chinese
especially, to extreme forms of violence. Migrants die from
suffocation, abandonment, accidents, or brutality by smugglers.


Globally, the pipeline to the United States today stretches from Asia,
across Europe, and through Central America and the Caribbean to the
United States. It involves large numbers of Chinese, South Asians, and
Latin Americans, as well as persons from countries disrupted by
natural disasters, political turmoil, and war. The pipeline to Europe
includes nationals from East Asian and Middle East countries who flow
into the Balkans, such as the Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia
and Bulgaria, and then on into Romania, Hungary and Ukraine to the
Czech Republic and Poland, from where they depart to EU countries such
as Austria, Italy and Germany. One route for Chinese nationals
involves travel by air directly from Thailand or Hong Kong or over
land from Russia, then to Poland, then the EU or the U.S.


Whatever the pipeline's route, it remains under the control of
smugglers who vary by geographic area and national identity, and
includes both individual operators and sophisticated international
smuggling rings. Migrants are passed along a chain that often involves
a number of smugglers, safe houses, transit points, and varied means
of travel. For some, the trip can be accomplished quickly by
commercial air. For those with limited funds, the journey can take
years of hardship and danger.


Examples of the Trade



The trade is truly a remarkable evil, exploited by governments that
are desperate, as well as by people who are desperate. Austria has no
problem obtaining hard currency, but some its neighbors may. Certainly
the United States' neighbor Cuba needs hard currency. Perhaps that is
why Cuban smuggling of aliens through commercial air flights from
Central and South American cities continues to increase. U.S.
immigration and consular officials report that the Cubans are using
photo substituted passports with valid U.S. visas from such countries
as Venezuela, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Guatemala, Chile,
and the Dominican Republic.


Any kind of hard currency will do if you are willing to take the
ancient trade routes used by Genghis Khan and his hordes. Hardy and
desperate Pakistani migrants transit Western China, Kazakhstan, and
Tashkent on their way to Europe, on routes also used to smuggle
narcotics and stolen cars, facilitated by corrupt, but not terribly
expensive, officials every step of the way.


In historic downtown Prague, there is a certain Chinese restaurant
with only eight tables, indifferent food, and few repeat patrons. But
it is so successful, it employs over 800 persons, none of whom are
Czech, with new Chinese employees signing on every week on their way
to new culinary adventures further west.


In Warsaw, an athletic organization called the Achilles Track Club
sends supposedly disabled athletes to attend sports events in the
United States and Canada: amputees and diabetics arrive in groups of
four, seven and eight, and then disappear, leaving behind their
temporary wheel chairs, temporary names, and temporary addresses.


In Vladivostok, Russia, there are literally tens of thousands of
Chinese migrants awaiting processing for Moscow on the way to Western
Europe and North America. Russian police say the Chinese population
there fears its own gangs far more than it does the Russian ones. The
Russians merely rob, while the Chinese also torture, persecute, and
take revenge on those who do not have the money to pay for the onward
journey. Meanwhile, some 40,000 South Asians, predominately Indians,
are in Russia, awaiting transportation to Scandinavia and Germany, on
their way to the rest of the EU.


Exotic tortures of illegal migrants are not limited to those
unfortunates who remain adrift in distant lands. Last year, in
Seattle, Washington, alien smugglers kidnapped three minor children
who had been smuggled previously into the United States. They demanded
money from their parents in China. Simultaneously, a Chinese
businessman and two women in New York were kidnapped by the same
criminal organizations for ransom. The Seattle kidnappings ended with
the freeing of the children, but not before the young girl was
repeatedly raped by her captors. The New York extortions ended with
the businessman shot in the head but recovering, one woman found
hanged and with a finger cut off, and the other woman found alive,
minus several fingers, and also sexually assaulted.


This is a nasty business indeed, enforced by vicious people. And the
trade becomes, if anything, even worse when it is applied to women and
children. While the traditional trade in migrants has tended to
involve economic migrants who are seeking work, or political migrants
who are fleeing from insecure, unsafe, or life-threatening social
environments, the traffic in women and children involves people who
have been deemed socially marginal or of low value in their own
societies, who are exploited for their "high-value" as victims of
people's desires in other societies that have failed to protect them.


The trafficking in women and children differs in some important
respects from other migrant trafficking. When a Chinese from Fujian
province decides to leave China for the West, there may or may not be
a job awaiting, there may or may not be an economic "pull" to fuel the
trade. Often, the pull is nothing stronger than the affluence of the
nation the Chinese seeks as his destination. But the "appetite" for
women who are trafficked is real. The demand for them, like the demand
of pedophiles for young children, is also real. And these demands have
created profound social evils, ruining the lives of the trafficked,
corrupting officials in the process, and creating tremendous demands
on social service networks to boot. There are important elements of
other migrant trafficking replicated in this traffic, but with this
key distinction: the specific demand that places a "high value" on
people who are otherwise given a "low value," is a critical
distinction, that I will discuss further in a few minutes.


TARGETING THE ELEMENTS



The key elements in the alien smuggling business are the following:



-- People who are willing to give up everything to move to another
country illegally. Such people will always be with us. Can you target
them? Yes, but you will have different results depending on the
reasons they are migrating. Economic migrants may be the hardest to
dissuade: They are looking for a better life, and if they can get to
your country, it is probably available to them. Enforcement activities
directed at reducing their chance of getting in, and their likelihood
of getting caught even when they are inside, are the best chance you
have of deterring them. Well-publicized repatriations can also have an
impact.


Political migrants, the refugees of war or civic strife, will stop
emigrating, and may even return, if you have provided them the
foundation for decent civil society, justice, and security in their
home. Thus, developing universal norms for the administration of
justice and for public security, backed up through implementation
assisted by the most developed countries, remains an integral
long-term strategy for discouraging political migration. This approach
is evident today in Albania, and will remain a core component of
stemming trafficking from Bosnia and its neighbors. Women and children
who are subject to being trafficked need to be warned ahead of time
through public affairs campaigns and provided victims services after
they have been trafficked. Both elements are essential to build the
understanding necessary to stem the trade.


-- People who recruit illegal migrants to travel halfway around the
world. Can you target them? Only if the source country is willing to
cooperate. Which are the sources? Most importantly, China, Pakistan,
India and Bangladesh, for the economic migrants. In each of these
source countries, the problem is twofold: first, one of political
will; second, one of capability. Which of these countries has a
central government that actually controls the major ports from which
the migrants leave? In countries torn by civic strife, smuggling of
all kinds is endemic, as is corruption. To go after the criminal
organizations based in such countries, you have to restore the
foundations of civil society. Places like Haiti, Bosnia, or Central
Africa are breeding grounds for every form of criminal until the
possibility of justice becomes routine, instead of extraordinary.
Those who recruit women and children are perhaps the easiest of the
traffickers to target. They are vulnerable, because what they are
doing violates the social norms of the very communities where they are
doing the recruiting. The truth, if made visible, is a powerful weapon
against them. An international policy of zero tolerance for such
traffickers, and of international cooperation against them, can have a
major impact.


-- Corrupt officials in transit countries. Yes, they, too, will always
be with us. But you can target them, through diplomatic, intelligence,
and law enforcement actions, private and public. Corrupt officials
move migrants. They provide passports, visas, citizenships, and safe
transit. Hollywood, for once, had it right in Casablanca. Claude Rains
was willing to move people from Casablanca, or not, on the basis of
hard cold cash and political expediency. In most countries, a
smuggler's payoff for passage of one small cluster of migrants would
quadruple a border agent's monthly wage. Asset forfeiture laws can
provide resources for governments to pay their officials by levying
directly upon the criminal's resources, eliminating the criminal's
previous role as paymaster.


-- Weak institutions in transit countries. Can you target them? Yes.
Assistance and exchange programs can build capability. This is
especially true when countries begin to feel themselves vulnerable to
injury as a result of transiting migrants. Today, an increasing number
of transit countries find they are becoming host countries to
thousands who simply stop there and impose a real burden on them. They
want better laws to protect themselves, and they want to find ways to
keep the illegals out of their countries. Institution building against
alien smuggling is not only possible, but essential. The
criminalization of alien smuggling in all countries, as Austria has
recommended in its resolution before the United Nations, is a major,
urgent goal that would have a substantial impact in increasing the
risks for the traffickers. But it has to be followed by an
implementation strategy that results in actual disruptions of criminal
organizations, through international law enforcement cooperation.


-- Counterfeit documents. Can you target them? Absolutely. The
destination countries can and should make their own document
requirements state-of-the-art, and then export those standards
everywhere, providing such technical support as transit countries
require to make it workable, including tough controls on passport
issuance.


-- Ports of entry in transit countries. Can you target them? Again, no
question. Part of this is targeting the corruption problem. In the
Dominican Republic under former President Ballaguer, whenever the
United States expressed concern about alien smuggling problems at its
seven major airports, we found the situation suddenly and dramatically
improved, at least for a few months. Similar, documented complaints by
the U.S. Embassy and State Department ended a people-smuggling
operation involving Cubana Airlines and Belize recently. Corruption is
not the only problem, of course. Even governments with officials of
goodwill may not have very developed security regimens at ports. They
need to receive training and assistance in implementing
state-of-the-art airport and seaport security of the kind that U.S.
Customs and Immigration have developed here.


-- Permissive legal systems in transit countries. Can you target them?
Yes, and you can change them. Criminalizing alien smuggling with
serious penalties attached is an essential element of combating the
trade. Because the aliens hurt the countries they transit, transit
countries are increasingly willing to criminalize, especially if donor
countries are willing to provide aid to those who do.


-- Boats at sea carrying migrants. Can you target them? Yes. We do.
But we need an international system for holding the migrants when we
or other governments stop the boats, and to ensure the punishment of
the smugglers back home. Recently, we advised Taiwan that we would
send Taiwanese boat captains back to China for processing in the
future, since previously Taiwan had simply released them upon return.


-- Weak border controls at destination countries. Ultimately, every
destination country has to strengthen its own capabilities to combat
the trade. We cannot have laws that encourage illegals to think
everything will work out when they arrive.


-- Inadequate international enforcement efforts against the criminal
organizations. Because the alien smugglers operate transnationally, it
is essential to take them out transnationally, not limiting
enforcement to stopping those at the end of the pipeline. This
requires gathering intelligence and disrupting the organizations and
their infrastructure through law enforcement and interdiction
operations, and when appropriate, through diplomatic demarche, and
public stigmatization of those who refuse to cooperate.


-- Defense in depth. The European experience of World War I should
remain a reminder that a Maginot Line at a border cannot substitute
for defense in depth. No nation can defend its borders purely through
any system of control at the border alone. It has to have intelligence
on what is happening beyond its borders, cooperation from officials in
other countries on what is coming to its borders, thorough
preparations at its borders, and finally, some system for checking on
what is taking place within its borders. The Schengen system may be
the most modern, sophisticated, and high-tech system for keeping track
of travelers without the right to enter the Schengen area. But it
imposes an extraordinary burden on the governments of Schengen to
respond to the problem of those who will go around the Schengen first
line of defense. Somehow, the Schengen area will have to evolve a
strategy for defense in depth, that respects human rights and
fundamental freedoms, without ignoring the reality that borders are
porous.


The U.S. Response



As a country with porous borders and a huge migrant trafficking
problem, the U.S. has had to make a number of changes to its laws and
its policies over the past five years, as the Clinton administration
has responded to the increased legal trade that has accompanied the
North American Free Trade Area. We have changed our immigration and
asylum procedures to increase criminal penalties for alien smuggling
and to make it easier to send those who have come to our country
illegally back to their homes.


-- We have begun public information campaigns in source countries to
explain the hazards of being trafficked to potential migrants,
including campaigns specifically targeting women in Central Europe.


-- We have taken action against foreign officials known to be
implicated in alien smuggling by revoking or denying their visas.


-- We have worked with transit countries to assist them in drafting
legislation to criminalize and target alien smuggling, and to provide
them with training in how to disrupt criminal organizations engaged in
smuggling people.


-- We have worked to harden ourselves as a target, improving our
passports and visas, adding new databases at our borders that have
more information from our law enforcement agencies on criminals who
might be seeking to enter the U.S. and by moving more towards "defense
in depth," placing more immigration officials overseas to develop
relationships with counterparts that will enable them to bust criminal
organizations, and to counter corruption.


-- And we are working with the European Union, the International
Organization of Migration, the UN and other organizations to develop
international cooperation against the traffickers, whose organizations
transcend all of our national borders, because in a transnational
world, no country can defend its own borders or its people, however
big or small, without the cooperation of the entire world.


Thank you.



(End text)