New CA law could help more victims of human trafficking

By Kanti Salgado, especially for CalMatters

This comment was originally posted by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Guest Comment written by

I know what it’s like to be treated like property.

I was brought to the United States from Sri Lanka when I was 19 with promises of a good job and a better life. Instead, I found myself trapped in a house in Los Angeles, forced to work around the clock—cooking, cleaning, babysitting, washing cars, gardening. I worked even when I was sick.

I wasn’t allowed to leave. They told me I couldn’t — because they had already bought me.

Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law Assembly Bill 1362which takes important steps to regulate the recruitment of foreign workers and provides protections for farm workers and others like me.

The bill requires these employees to register with the state, which can revoke their registration if they violate the law or workers’ rights.

These protections are long overdue, proof that California is listening to the voices of workers and survivors of labor trafficking, that our stories are finally being heard.

Still, AB 1362, while a step in the right direction, is not enough. It covers many foreign workers, but not all.

I came to the US on a domestic worker visa, but many others arrive under one of the 13 other categories of temporary visas. We all need these protections because traffickers thrive in the shadows and don’t care about visa types.

They look for loopholes. Every loophole in the law gives them room to operate. And they know where the laws don’t fit.

We need protection not only at the time of abuse—usually in the workplace—but also from the very beginning, starting with recruitment in our home countries.

Telling my story is not easy. Even now, more than 25 years later, it hurts. But I share it because people need to understand how trafficking happens, how it often starts with a lie.

The workers go to impoverished villages in countries where people are desperate for work. They offer the ideal dream: good pay, free services, easy process, only eight hours of work a day, own room, own bed.

For someone without a job or opportunity, this sounds like a miracle. That’s what I believed.

But once you’re on the plane to America, everything changes. They take your passport. They isolate you. They tell you that you owe them—for the plane ticket, for the job, for every price imaginable.

After that, the wages stop. One month. Six months. One year. Or in my case, four years.

They made me work non-stop. They didn’t pay me. I was alone. I didn’t speak English and I had no way out. I was regularly slapped and pinched, mostly when I asked questions or tried to assert myself.

The man I worked for threatened my family. When my father died, I was told I couldn’t come home. I couldn’t even send money. I was a prisoner.

This did not happen in a faraway land. It happened here in California. And it still happens today.

I am deeply grateful to the legislators, advocates, and everyone who fought for AB 1362. Progress matters, but the fight continues.

I hope that the study that AB 1362 requires from the State Department of Industrial Relations will finally clarify how California can ensure that all workers are afforded these critical protections.

It breaks my heart that we are still fighting for the most basic protections. Survivors like me are still talking, still living our pain, because change is too slow – and for someone out there right now, it’s a matter of life and death.

AB 1362 gives us hope. Now let’s build on that – and make sure no one is left behind.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.