Thread: Victims of human trafficking fight for promised fed money

http://www.mercurynews.com

Posted on Sat, Sep. 09, 2006

Victims of human trafficking fight for promised federal college money

ANDREW GLAZER
Associated Press

COSTA MESA, Calif. - A Vietnamese mother, lured by the promise of a high-paying factory job, chased her dream of sending both daughters to college into a sweatshop far from home, with no exit.

She fell prey to men who took her to the American territory of Samoa, where she was enslaved with about 250 other desperate women from China and Vietnam. Those who complained were beaten and starved.

Freed when the garment factory closed in 2000, some of the women risked their lives to help U.S. authorities investigate and convict the kingpins of what federal authorities have called the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

In return, the victims and their families could apply for permanent U.S. resident status under the newly enacted Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. The federal law also guaranteed housing, money and financial aid to attend college.

But bureaucratic confusion and indifference has kept dozens of eligible applicants from getting the money promised for college, according to legal aid lawyers who represent trafficking victims.

The lawyers said the U.S. Department of Education failed for nearly six years to set up a clear process for applying for the aid, leaving colleges unsure how to handle applicants.

The law is "a place where policy hasn't met practice," said Heather Moore, who oversees social service programs for trafficking victims at Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Trafficking & Slavery.

Under pressure from attorneys representing trafficking victims, the Department of Education finally set up a hot line in May for college financial aid officers to verify the status of the victims.

Federal officials also have sent a memo describing the new process to schools, U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Jane Glickman said.

Glickman said she could not explain why there had been so much confusion about the benefits, and noted the Department of Education did not track how many people had applied for the financial aid.

"It used to be a very convoluted process," Glickman said. "Now with this issuance in May, we're hoping it is simplified and streamlined."

Ngoc Bich Nguyen, 20, a daughter of the Vietnamese woman held in Samoa, attended one semester at an Orange County college before learning her request for aid had been denied and she had been reported to a collection agency.

"My first reaction was that I asked God, why do these things happen to me?" Nguyen said.

The special T-visas granted to trafficking victims and family members provide refugee-like status to cooperative witnesses whose lives would be endangered if they returned to their home countries.

Under U.S. law, trafficking victims are defined as immigrants who were coerced from their home countries into slavery, prostitution or domestic servitude.

About 1,000 people have been granted the special T-visas by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They are among the poorest and most vulnerable families in the nation.

"If we want to make sure we are not creating another class, if we want to prevent trafficking survivors from falling into the same vulnerable state that led them to being victims in the first place, we need to offer more than a visa," Moore said.

Nguyen and her younger sister received T-visas and were reunited with their mother in 2003 after a nonprofit group resettled her in the Vietnamese enclave of Westminster. The soft-spoken teen was overwhelmed by the vast differences between life in Hanoi and Orange County.

She had to rely on friends to drive her on busy highways rather than bicycle on dirt roads. She got lost in sprawling supermarkets and drank gallons of water every day because she wasn't used to the dry climate.

Nguyen began to learn English after arriving to the U.S. but still managed to graduate from Garden Grove High School in 2005 with a B-plus average. With her mother employed as a nurse, she enrolled at Hope International University, a Christian college in Fullerton, hoping to study premed.

She had an $8,000 state grant and expected the federal aid to cover the rest, said her attorney Sheila Neville of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Nguyen said she felt proud that her mother, whose name she asked to be withheld, had achieved her goal of sending her to college.

"I felt so grateful about the education," Nguyen said.

But after her first semester ended, the school's financial aid director told Nguyen the university didn't recognize her T-visa.

"It's crystal clear under the law," Neville said. "But they said they didn't know what we were talking about."

Rhoda Posey, Hope's new director of financial aid, said her predecessor was unfamiliar with the program.

Calls and e-mails to various federal officials failed to resolve Nguyen's status. Neville sought help from a network of lawyers specializing in trafficking victims and found dozens of other people stuck in a similar bureaucratic morass.

Some frustrated clients had dropped out of college. Others said they bypassed the confusion by convincing financial aid officers to recognize them as refugees.

Student Trang Dao, whose mother also worked in the Samoan sweatshop, managed to secure academic scholarships from their colleges.

"It was kind of weird," said Dao, 20, a student at Golden West College. "My mom has the paper that says 'this person and her family qualifies for every program.'"

Still. financial aid officials turned her down.

Officials at Hope said last week that Nguyen had finally been approved for the federal financial aid and could return this semester, debt-free.

"Most of my life, I wanted to go to college," she said. "I don't know what I would do if I couldn't."

Freed when the garment factory closed in 2000, some of the women risked their lives to help U.S. authorities investigate and convict the kingpins of what federal authorities have called the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

In return, the victims and their families could apply for permanent U.S. resident status under the newly enacted Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. The federal law also guaranteed housing, money and financial aid to attend college.

Illegal aliens have it easier than these women who helped us.

Isn't it odd that they didn't name the names of the "kingpins" who did this to them. Were these American Citizens, the "kingpins"? I would sure like to know.