Child Trafficking on the Rise in the U.S.?

There’s a sad story in the AP today by Rukmini Callimachi about child maid trafficking in the U.S.

Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family’s crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.

The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.

This practice is apparently a growing problem in the U.S., because well-to-do Africans immigrating to the U.S. who engage in this child-maid slavery are bringing this practice with them. An estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the U.S. right now are servants who are trapped in suburban homes, according to a National Human Rights Center survey, conducted with Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one is certain how many are children, since the work can be couched as chores.

Research by the U.S. State Department reveals that just over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in 33 of Africa’s 53 countries, and children from 10 African countries were sent as maids to Europe and the U.S. However, the problem is so well-disguised that nobody is sure how many child maids are in the U.S. today.

The saddest part is that the parents of these children often send the children willingly, believing that their children will have a better life as a maid than with their own families.

Shyima’s mother, Salwa Mahmoud, said her father believed she would have better opportunities in America.

“I didn’t want her to travel but our family’s condition dictated that she had to go,” explained Mahmoud, a squat, round-faced woman with calloused hands and feet. She is missing two front teeth because she couldn’t afford a dentist.

“If she had stayed here in Egypt, she would have been ordinary,” said Awatef, Shyima’s older sister. “Just like us.”

Shyima’s story has a somewhat happy ending, after several rocky years since leaving the servitude of the Egyptian. She was adopted last year by a couple in California, and graduated from high school this summer after passing her exit exam the second time around. Now 19, Shyima hopes to become a police officer and has a boyfriend. She keeps photos of her parents, brothers and sisters in a box in her closet. She says she doesn’t look at them because it makes her cry. “How could they? They’re my parents” she said.

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