Does Slavery Still Exist

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Does slavery still exist in America? The answer to that might surprise some people. After all, didn’t slavery in America end in 1863 thanks to Abraham Lincoln? In his famous Emancipation Proclamation he declared “That on the 1st day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within… United States, shall be… forever free” (“Emancipation Proclamation” 1). Regrettably things didn’t stay that way for long. According to Ethan B. Kapstein a professor at INSEAD, more people than ever before are being trafficked across international borders (Kapstein 1-2). David Hodge an assistant professor at the Arizona State University stated in an article that it was estimated by “The State Department……show more content…
In 2000, the United States government erected the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 in hopes of halting this tragedy. The act “was [later] amended in 2003 by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (P.L. 108-193)… [after recognizing] that existing laws often fail to protect victims of trafficking and… punish victims more severely than they do traffickers”(Hodge 5). The government is not unaware and is working to put an end to this horrible act. However, there’s a few things wrong with the government’s approach. According to Louise Gerdes a published author with multiple articles in Opposing Viewpoints, there are many cases where "… sex work is often the only viable alternative for women in communities coping with poverty, unemployment … in… complete absence of social welfare programs" (Gerdes 1). If the government wants to eliminate human trafficking especially within the sex industry, then it must focus on those people as well and realize that different approaches must be used for each, “instead [of] lumping together trafficking, prostitution and commercial sex as offenses against the "moral law that stands above nations." (Gerdes 1). As stated by Thomas Melito the director of the International Affairs and Trade, the government uses estimates for data reports on a yearly scale. However the problem with that is that it “…cannot be used to analyze trafficking over time to determine whether it is increasing, decreasing, or staying the same (Meito 4). With that said, how will the government be able to see if their current approach is effective (Meito 4)? With out a doubt, there are still many areas that the government must improve on for there are many weak points in the current

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