Human trafficking in the 1980s

[alimsiemanym]

Setting: 1985 - 1989 in Miami, FL
Research done: Wikipedia (page: FBI); Google, search terms included various combinations of "1980s", "Miami", "human trafficking", "FBI", "history", "undercover

Comments

[mr_mitts]

Human trafficking's been big since forever.

Miami in the 1980s? You're looking at Cubans, Mexicans and West Africans (Sierra Leone and Liberia) as the majority groups. There was also a booming trade in East Asians (Vietnamese, Laotians and Chinese) being smuggled in via Snakeheads to East Coast cities (people are less inclined to pay attention to Asians coming the opposite direction into the country, after all

[maroon_ed]

Poking around Google with "human trafficking Miami" I'm getting some useful stuff but not necessarily what you're looking for. (I'm a subsciber to iAbolish.org, so this topic is a cause of mine)

80% of people trafficked are women, as a rule. They are often lured by promises of legitimate work in the wealthy country, get there to find the work is demeaning or worse, they're locked up and their papers--if they had any--confiscated. Outright kidnapping happens but it's not the rule.

Looking at http://www.floridafreedom.org/traffickingin.php and other sites, the people trafficked generally come from poor countries, especially those that have 'recently' hit a bad spell. If you can't find a source that tells you most people trafficked were from X country, you could take a reasonable guess from which country had an economic downturn in the relevant year.

[cdozo]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6DC103BF932A15750C0A964958260&&scp=4&sq=sweatshop%20passports%20chinatown&st=cse

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E5DA163EF931A25751C1A960958260&sec=&spon=&&scp=9&sq=forced%20labor%20passports%20miami&st=cse

[sushidog]

Growing up in the UK in the late '70s and '80s, I remember hearing about Vietnamese boat people on the news all the time; that might be something worth looking at?