Late last week the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.R. 400, which would require the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to propose a definition of recruitment fees within 180 days of the statute’s enactment.  H.R. 400 explains that “contractors sometimes employ foreign workers who are citizens neither of the United States nor of the host country and are recruited from developing countries where low wages and recruitment methods often make them vulnerable to a variety of trafficking-related abuses,” including the charging of certain fees during recruitment.  Highlighting the potential for harm associated with such fees, H.R. 400 discusses a  report of the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of State, which found that 77 percent of foreign workers reported paying fees to recruiters and that a majority of these fees resulted in “debt bondage at their destinations.”…
Continue Reading Efforts to Define Recruitment Fees Move Forward as Newly-Revised Human Trafficking Rule Goes into Effect