Is the US serious about combating migrant child trafficking?
How degradation in child labor laws, labor shortages, and stalled immigration policy contribute to migrant child trafficking into the US.
Earlier this year US senator Luján introduced the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE) Act in the US senate. If enacted, CARE would close several loopholes and strengthen the Child Labor Provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA); the backbone of labor protections in the United States. Children rights advocates hail CARE as a step in the right direction as FLSA, a federal law, acts as a floor for state-based child labor laws across the USA.
Unfortunately, even with Child Labor provisions in place, as per Labor Department data, illegal child labor has been on the rise for the last decade. For businesses that are caught using child labor the penalty of a fine tends to be negligible compared to the savings, and as we have seen in multiple cases, not severe enough to alter behavior.
Overall, the number of children at work in the USA increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022[2] as economic pressures required children (both American and Migrant) to work in order to support their families. And post COVID as the labor market tightened industry has been move willing to employ minors as they are cheaper and less likely to unionize or know their rights. In response to the evolving crisis there has been a targeted effort by industry to erode state-based child labor protection laws in an attempt to by-pass FLSA. As such legalizing and legitimizing previously illegal child labor.
Over the last 2–3 years over 14 states have introduced laws that would loosen current child labour laws. This includes extending work hours, increasing the daily / weekly cap on hours worked, lowering the age for hazardous work, and lowering the age for alcohol service. For example, in March this year Indiana repealed work hour restrictions allowing 16–17-year-olds to work past 10pm and before 6am on school days. The same law increased legal working hour limits for 14–15-year-olds. In Florida, for teens attending online school or being home schooled all work hour restrictions are lifted. Effectively making it legal for teens to work overnight shifts. The same law makes it legal for 16–17year olds to work 7 days in a row. In Iowa it is legal for 16–17-year-olds to work in hazardous jobs like industrial laundries, light manufacturing, demolition, roofing, and excavation[3] if they are enrolled in a work-based learning program, internship or technical educational program[4]. They also have extended work hours for migrant children that effectively allows them to work all day once they have a work permit[5].
Supporters of these changes claim that legally allowing minors to work longer hours in a wider range of jobs gives them better work experience and financial independence. But some experts believe that these changes are being driven by wage inflation caused by labor shortages[6]. As per the US Chamber of Commerce, labor force participation has decreased 7% from 2001 to 2024[7]. A survey of unemployed persons showed that close to 50% were only interested in remote working opportunities, over 25% said they do not need to go back to work again, and 35% from the 24–35 age group were focused on self-improvement. Hence it comes as no surprise that industries like agriculture and businesses that need dishwashers, servers, cleaners, landscapers, sanitation/waste disposal workers[8] (hourly wage jobs that require minimal education and do not support remote working[9]) are struggling to fill job vacancies.
As per the US Chamber of Commerce data, for 8.5 million job openings there are only 6.5 million unemployed workers[10]. Evaluating the data in the figure below we find that off the 50 states, over 25 states have seen a 10% to 40% increase in job vacancies and 5 states have seen a 40% to 70% increase in job openings from 2020 to 2024. A clear sign that the US economy has a growing labor shortage problem. The Chamber attributes
these shortages to declining labor force participation, early retirement triggered by the pandemic, and a sharp decline in net immigration. Per the census bureau net immigration decreased by an estimated 76% from 2015 to 2021[11]. Data tracking the immigrant population’s impact on US’ labor force finds that 25% of the workers in the agriculture and construction sectors are immigrants. To put this in perspective immigrants are 17.2% of the labor force and only 13.8% of the population[12]. Further, the two figures below provide a comprehensive view on the role immigrants play in the US’s food sector. No wonder a 2023 WSJ report found that US businesses were paying higher wages to immigrants to fill hourly job vacancies in construction and food service sectors[13].
There is no doubt that immigrants play a vital role in the lower end of the US labor market which as per the Chamber’s survey, Americans are not interested in. As such US business, big and small, rely on immigrant labor to fill certain job vacancies. Yet there has been no meaningful immigration reform in the US since 1986 to address labor requirements of these businesses. The recent easing of legal immigration pathways by the Biden administration only apply to nationals from Afghanistan and Ukraine. As per Pew research, majority of these immigrants have a high school degree or higher education. While the same research finds that majority of the immigrants from Mexico, South America and Central America have little education[15] and hence more likely to fill the hourly wage vacancies.
For the Central and South Americans fleeing economic devastation, violence, and climate change, the treacherous journey across the Rio Grande remains the most viable path. Add to that President Biden’s recent executive order to deny asylum to any person entering the US illegally and President Trump’s 472 executive actions on immigration[16], the US-Mexico border has been effectively closed and asylum protections remain diminished for adults fleeing Central and South America. The same is not true for unaccompanied children as they are protected by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) and the Flores agreement. And in 2021 when President Biden made an exception for unaccompanied minors while COVID border restrictions remained, an unprecedented number crossed into the USA[17]. In 2022, U.S. officials processed an estimated 130,000 unaccompanied children along the southern border[18].
As the system stands, within 72 hours of detainment the border patrol must hand over unaccompanied minors to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the federal agency responsible for their care under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The HSS is tasked with providing immediate shelter and finding a suitable in-country caretaker or sponsor for long term care. This can be an immediate or distant relative or an unrelated third-party sponsor. Per HHS records an estimated 20,000 children were placed with unrelated sponsors[19] and approximately 85,000 of the unaccompanied minors are currently missing[20]. Meaning that they are no longer living with their sponsors and the HHS does not know where they are.
Desperate and alone immigrant children are more vulnerable to working in illegal and exploitative conditions[21]. A NYT[22] exposé found that Central American migrant children, often as young as 12 years[23], working in slaughterhouses, construction sites, food processing plants, manufacturing facilities and other hazardous jobs. Most worked overnight shifts to avoid detection, experienced wage theft, experienced work-related injury, and were often not enrolled in school. The FBI and DHS are currently investigating trafficking networks that are targeting Central American children by bringing them across the border to forcefully work these jobs[24]. Investigation thus far show that the children get these jobs using fake IDs and are housed by unrelated sponsors that are part of the trafficking network.
Efforts to combat trafficking networks is a step in the right direction but as we have seen with the gun and drug trafficking networks across the southern border, agency efforts disrupt but are unable to stop. The unfortunate reality remains that Central and South Americans are facing crushing poverty and migration out of this region has increased from 8% to 43% from 2019 to 2021[25]. With the border effectively closed for adults, families are being advised to send their unaccompanied children across the border to work. Most are hoping for a better life, but these children must work to cover their expenses in the US, pay back debt owed to traffickers, and send money back home. As a result, they are an available, cheap, and willing labor supply at a time when US businesses are struggling to fill vacancies in unskilled, hourly wage jobs. And as more states join the band wagon to lower child labor protections and improve ease of hiring children, economically vulnerable migrant children will increasingly fill the labor gaps.
Thus, if the US is serious about combatting the migrant child trafficking networks it must consider all contributing factors, especially the ones it has control over. It must consider how stalled immigration policy that stops adults but allows children will force more migrant children to cross the border and work. It must consider how federal, and state-based child labor laws encourage and penalize illegal child labor. This includes how the loosening of state-based laws will create an acceptable legal child labor market. Because not doing so will allow the trifecta of externalities to create a ripe legal environment for migrant children trafficking into the US.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/31/us-child-labor-laws-state-bills/
[2] https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/child-labor-industrial-capitalism/
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/31/us-child-labor-laws-state-bills/
[5] http://publications.iowa.gov/18470/1/iowateens.pdf
[7] https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage
[10] https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage
[11] https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage
[12] https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/national/
[14] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/essential-role-immigrants-us-food-supply-chain
[16] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/four-years-change-immigration-trump
[18] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-migrant-child-labor-biden-administration/
[19] https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/the-struggle-to-locate-migrant-children-missing-from-us-homes
[20] https://www.newsweek.com/under-joe-biden-undocumented-children-missing-1812728
[22] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
[23] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/underage-workers/
[24] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/feds-expand-probe-migrant-child-labor-slaughterhouses-rcna72930
[25] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/labor-shortages-child-labor-migrants.html
