Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: The scourge of human trafficking persists and manifests itself in the modern era, whether termed modern-day slavery, forced labor, involuntary domestic servitude, sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, bonded labor, forced child labor, or debt bondage among migrant laborers. According to the 2013 Trafficking in Persons
(TIP)Report of the United States Department of State, each year an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States, with the largest number of people trafficked into the United States coming from East Asia and the Pacific, and the next highest numbers coming from Latin America, Europe, and Eurasia. The majority of victims of modern-day slavery are women and children because traffickers prey on those who suffer most from gender discrimination, family violence, and a lack of access to education and economic opportunity. Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the 21st century, generating profits for traffickers in excess of $30,000,000,000, according to the International Labor Organization, ranking with drug smuggling and arms dealing in organized crime activities. There remains a stark disparity between the large global problem of trafficking in persons and the low numbers of prosecutions and convictions of forced labor trafficking crimes, which accounted for less than 3 percent of all convictions worldwide as recently as 2009.