Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the HELP Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2528, and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 761, S. 1687.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee substitute be agreed to, the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 934, S. 2417.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee substitute be agreed to, the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 915, S. 2688.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to, the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 652, S. 2413.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, Senators Campbell and Leahy have an amendment at the desk, and I ask for its consideration.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5362 which is at the desk.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that previously agreed to amendment No. 4302 to H.R. 2389 be modified with the change that is at the desk.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an associate in my office, Chad Luck, be granted the privilege of the floor during my discussion of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Wyoming allowing me to speak on a topic that we will be taking up fully tomorrow. Tomorrow this body will take up the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. That will be the business of the day. Tomorrow we will vote on two bills associated therewith. The development of this legislation has been in progress for most of this year, and there are several pieces in this bill. What I will do today is discuss with my colleagues what is in this bill, why it is important, why it passed the House of Representatives 371-1, and why it is important that we address this important issue at this particular time. Senator Wellstone and I have been working on this legislation for this past year. It is the companion piece to a bill that passed in the House, sponsored by Chris Smith and Sam Gejdenson. The House bill is known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Our antitrafficking bill is the first complete legislation to address the growing practice of international trafficking worldwide. This is one of the largest manifestations of modern-day slavery internationally. Notably, this legislation is the most significant human rights bill of the 106th Congress if it is passed tomorrow as is expected. This is also the largest anti-slavery bill the United States has adopted, arguably, since 1865 and the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War. Therefore, I greatly anticipate this vote tomorrow in the Senate on this very important legislation. Senator Wellstone's and my trafficking bill, which passed in the Senate on July 27 of this year, was conferenced to reconcile the differences with the House bill. The conference report was filed on October 5, Thursday of last week. The final conference package contains four additional pieces of legislation which are substantially appropriate to our bill. Most significant among those bill amendments is the Violence Against Women Act, which is part of this overall conference report--it is known as VAWA--which provides relief and assistance to those who suffer domestic violence in America. It is an important part of the package. It is a key piece of legislation that this body has previously passed. I am glad that it is part of this package. And it will pass as well with this overall package so we can help people caught in domestic violence. Thus, the overall four bills included in this conference report are: The sex trafficking bill that I mentioned at the outset; VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act; Aimee's law, which provides for interstate compensation for the costs of the incarceration of early-released sex offenders who commit another sex crime in a second State. The 21st Amendment Enforcement Act is also in this overall conference report. It allows for State attorneys general to enforce their State alcohol control laws in Federal court, including laws prohibiting sales to minors, which strengthens the grant of authority to States under the 21st amendment to the Constitution. The final piece of legislation in this conference report is the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which authorizes the payment of foreign seized assets to victims of international terrorism. The last step to adopting this legislative package rests with the Senate tomorrow. As I stated previously, it cleared the House on Friday by a vote of 371-1. This legislation is our best opportunity to challenge the largest manifestation of current slavery worldwide, known as trafficking. I want to describe that term and what this bill does to get at what is taking place in the form of trafficking. This practice of trafficking involves the coercive transportation of persons into slavery-like conditions, primarily involving forced prostitution, among other forms of slavery-like conditions. Trafficking is the new slavery of the world. These victims are routinely forced against their will into the sex trade, transported across international borders, and left defenseless in a foreign country. This bill also addresses the insidious practice known as ``debt bondage,'' wherein a person can be enslaved to the money lender for an entire lifetime because of a $50 debt taken by the family for an emergency. This is a common practice in countries such as India and Nepal, among other places throughout the South Asian region. People of conscience have fought against the different manifestations of slavery for centuries. I might note that my State came into the Union under the fight of whether or not it would be a free or slave State in the 1860s. That was the big fight. In my State, we had bleeding Kansans, where they were referred to as those who were pro-slavery and those who were abolitionists. The freedom forces fought guerrilla warfare to determine whether the State would be slave or free. The first election was actually stolen by the slave-State proponents, and there was a constitution they put forward that would allow slavery in Kansas. The free-State forces overtook them. They had a free election. The free-State ballot was elected and won. Kansas came in as a free State--probably one of the decisive events in setting off the Civil War--because then the balance of power in Washington shifted. Under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Nebraska was thought to come in as a free State, Kansas as a slave State, and Washington's balance of power would be maintained. When the abolitionists moved out of the Northeast to Kansas to settle, and to make sure it would be a free State, that tipped the balance of power and clearly led, according to historians, to the start of the Civil War. That is the history of my State. It is a noble one of fighting for freedom. This anti-slavery legislation is in the tradition of William Wilberforce and Amy Carmichael of England, who were ardent abolitionists against slavery in the 19th and 20th centuries. Amy Carmichael was a British missionary to India at the turn of the last century and in the early 1900s. Upon arriving in that country, she was mortified to discover the routine practice of forced temple prostitution taking place. This was and continues to be a practice where young girls, from age 6 onward, are dedicated to the local temple, and are then forced into prostitution against their will to generate income. Upon this morbid discovery, Amy Carmichael began to physically steal the young girls away from this incredibly degrading form of slavery. She would then hide the girls so they would escape the inevitable backlash of violence against these little girls. Eventually, the government outlawed this practice of forced temple prostitution as a result of Amy Carmichael's efforts. However, it bears noting that this terrible practice continues today in some rural villages throughout South Asia. This bill challenges the myriad forms of slavery, including sex trafficking, temple prostitution, and debt bondage, among other forms. This new phenomenon of sex trafficking, unfortunately, is growing exponentially. Some report that it is, at least, a $7 billion-per-year illicit trade, exceeded only by the international drug and arms trade in the illegal category. Its victims are enslaved into a devastating brutality against their will, with no hope for relief or justice, while its perpetrators build criminal empires on this suffering with impunity. Our legislation will begin to challenge these injustices. This is the new slavery of the world. As hard as it is to believe, women and children are routinely forced against their will into the sex trade internationally. They are usually transported across international borders so as to ``shake'' local authorities, leaving the victims defenseless in a foreign country, virtually held hostage in a strange land. The favored girls are in the age range of 10 to 13 years old. I hope some people here can look at their own children or grandchildren and ask how this could possibly happen to somebody so young. This bill is the first complete legislation to address this practice known as sex slavery, which has risen dramatically in the past two decades. It has risen dramatically with the increase of child pornography, sex tours in Eastern Asia, and the general popularizing of the sex industry worldwide. This mass trafficking of women and children, which includes both girls and boys, has been compared to some of the slave trade practices in the 18th and 19th centuries. Professor Laura Lederer of Johns Hopkins University has identified the trafficking routes internationally. I want to put some of these routes up on a chart so my colleagues will be able to see where she has tracked these routes to take place. You can see on the chart the trafficking routes from Russia and the Newly Independent States to other places around the world. We actually had a lady in the Foreign Relations Committee who testified she had been trafficked out of the Ukraine into Israel. You can see all these routes being described going into Canada, into the United States, into Mexico, into Europe, and into other places in South Asia, into Australia and into South Africa. These are the trafficking routes on which Professor Lederer has worked. She has studied this for nearly 10 years, describing and trying to put a finger on where these routes go. This chart shows trafficking routes going into the United States. By our own Government estimates, about 50,000 girls are trafficked into the United States annually by this sex trafficking, this sex prostitution business. These are the routes shown here on this chart, with 50,000 girls per year trafficked into the United States. According to the State Department estimates, these are the routes coming in from Asia, the ports of entry they come in to the United States. Here on this chart is shown the routes coming from Central America and South America. Shown here on this chart are the routes coming in from Europe and Africa and the ports of entry where they have been trafficked. Again, Dr. Lederer's Protection Project work showcases the same. Here is where they are coming from. It is of note to say, as well, that by our Government estimates this is a growing practice. It is growing more because organized crime is getting more and more into it. We heard testimony in committee that organized crime is actually favoring going into this over drugs because they can sell their product more than one time. And in some places where they traffic in prostitution it is not illegal. So they are going into it in a nonillegal category, where it is a legal business. The category of sex trafficking is growing rapidly. Other routes that have been discussed with us in committee include girls sold or abducted from Nepal into India. Nepalese girls are prized because of their beauty and their inability to defend themselves given the situations out of which they are coming. In Eastern Asia, most abductees are innocent tribal girls from isolated mountain regions; they are forced into sexual service, primarily into Thailand and Malaysia. I met with some of these Nepalese girls as they had returned, being taken back from the brothels of India. I met with them in January of this year in Katmandu. It was despicable to see these girls, many of them taken at 11, 12 years of age, coming back 16, 17 years old, two- thirds of them having AIDS and/or tuberculosis. It is a deplorable situation. This is how the traffickers obtain their unsuspecting victims. Fraud is commonly used by traffickers against villagers in underdeveloped areas. Typically the buyer promises the parents that he or she is taking their young daughters to the city to become a nanny or domestic servant, giving the parents a few hundred dollars as a down payment for the future money she will earn for the family. Then the girl is transported across international borders, deposited in a brothel and forced into the trade, until she is no longer useful, having contracted some disease. She is held against her will on the false premise that she must work off her debt which was paid for the cost of her transportation, which typically takes several years. In fact, in India it is common for indentured laborers generally, not even sex workers, simply manual labor, to work 10 years or more to pay off a $50 debt. The use of force to obtain the victim is common in the cities, where a girl is physically abducted, beaten, and held against her will, sometimes in chains. I have talked with these girls myself, as they appeared in two hearings that Senator Wellstone and I held before the Foreign Relations Committee. Some of them came in disguise because they feared the retribution their families might suffer back home, for reason of their testimony in exposing the slave trade mafia. That is how insidious and widespread this practice is. Existing laws internationally fail to make clear distinctions between victims of sexual trafficking and the perpetrators. Also, the victims frequently do not have legal immigrations status in the countries into which they are trafficked, and the victims are punished even more harshly than the traffickers. Our legislation establishes an entirely different approach of punishing the perpetrators but not the victims. Our legislation also facilitates important and baldly needed advocacy to raise awareness regarding sexual trafficking throughout the world. Additional legislative measures include: Providing new criminal punishment with enhanced sentences for persons convicted of operating such slavery enterprises in the U.S., as present criminal statutes are inadequate to obtain sentences commensurate with this new form of sex trafficking and slavery; Establing a reporting and advocacy mechanism at the State Department which would monitor efforts taken by foreign countries to criminalize, punish and combat international sex trafficking within their borders; and Assistance for victims in the U.S., including authorization of grants to shelters and rehabitation programs. The legislation further includes the creation of a new form of visa for trafficking victims. This will substantially allow for more aggressive prosecution, as well as the protection of these witness victims. It enhances cooperation and assistance with law enforcement agencies in foreign countries for the investigation and prosecution of international sexual trafficking, as well as promoting assistance in drafting and implementation of legislation. And it promotes the creation of worldwide awareness programs to alert unsuspecting, potential victims of this practice. Senator Wellstone and I believe this is the first sex trafficking legislation to pass around the world. We are hopeful it will become a model for other countries to deal with this pernicious, insidious practice that is part of the dark side of the new globalization of the economy. I support the expansion of the economy. The globalization taking place can be a very positive thing, such as what is taking place today with the signing of permanent normal trade relations with China by the President that this body passed. But we also have to recognize that there are dark aspects of globalization; this being one of them. We need to deal with that as well. Trafficking victims are the new enslaved of the world. Until recently, they had virtually no advocates, no defenders, no avenues for escape, except death, to release them from their obscene circumstances. This is changing rapidly, and a new human rights movement is forming on behalf of these victims and against the trafficking networks. This growing movement runs from right to left, from William Bennett and Chuck Colson to Gloria Steinem; all are involved in supporting this legislation. Our legislation is part of that movement, providing numerous protections and tools to empower these brutalized people towards re-capturing their dignity and obtaining justice. Trafficking has risen dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years with experts speculating that it could exceed the drug trade in revenues in the next few decades. It is sadly observed that drugs are sold once, while a woman or child can be sold 20 and even 30 times a day. This dramatic increase is attributed also to the popularizing of the sex industry worldwide, including the increase of child pornography and sex tours in Eastern Asia that I previously mentioned. A Washington Post article entitled, ``Sex Trade Enslaves East Europeans,'' dated July 25th, vividly captures the suffering of one Eastern Europe woman who was trafficked through Albania to Italy: As Irina recounts the next part of her story, she picks and scratches at the skin on her face, arms and legs, as if looking for an escape--she says the women were raped by a succession of Albanian men who stopped by at all hours, in what seemed part of a carefully organized campaign of psychological conditioning for a life of prostitution. This awful practice must be challenged, and our legislation would do exactly that. In closing, there is a unique generosity in the American people, who are respected internationally for their love of justice. As we challenge this dehumanizing trade, an inspired movement is growing in America and worldwide, a modern-day abolitionist movement. Please make this legislation a reality for the countless people who are presently lost to this modern day slave trade. Please vote for passage of this historic anti-slavery legislation and move forward this modern abolitionist movement. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 370, submitted earlier by Senator Helms.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statement relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 365 and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I note for Senators, this bill, the Sexual Trafficking Victims Protection Act, is an amalgam of several pieces of legislation. It is the sex trafficking bill that we have held several hearings on that passed this body previously, and that passed through the House. I believe in the House the vote was 371-1. It also has in it the Violence Against Women Act, VAWA, and several other pieces of important legislation. We will be on this most of the day tomorrow. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that at the hour of 12:30 p.m. the Senate stand in recess until the hour of 2:15 p.m. in order for the weekly party caucuses to meet.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the provisions of S. Res. 369.