Proposed legislation that aims to prevent U.S. contractors from exploiting foreign workers at military bases and other American facilities abroad is working its way through Congress, having received strong bipartisan support in the House this week now moves to the Senate after the House of Representatives passed the legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support on Monday.

The bill, which was introduced in the House back in January 2015, now will enters the lengthy process of reviews and revisions by the Senate before it can be voted on by the upper chamber. GovTrack.us, a government transparency website, gives the law a 36 percent chance of being enacted.

The legislation would enforce recommendations from the Government Accountability Office, which in ’s 2014 report that called for the Defense Department, the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development to more closely monitor their contractors' hiring practices of their contractors more closely.

So far, only the Pentagon Department of Defense has complied.

These American agencies often rely on independent contractors to carry out construction, security and maintenance services at their overseas facilities, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the government is wary of hiring local labor due to security concerns, contractors recruit many foreign nationals from Southeast Asian countries like India and Nepal to staff the facilities.

This diagram from GAO-15-102 explains the process:

How contractors hire foreign workers.

Photo Credit: Courtesy GAO

However, the government’s lack of government involvement in this third-party hiring process can lead to potentially unethical practices, the Government Accountability Office warned. Its reports found that many contractors make employees pay for their right to work with "recruitment fees" that cover travel, administrative, housing and other costs. In numerous cases, the fees were exorbitant, costing workers anywhere from six months to over a full year of their salary, according to the GAO, an investigative arm of Congress.

Annick Febrey, a senior associate at Human Rights First, an anti-trafficking organization, says that contractors’ unscrupulous hiring processes often lure rural villagers with guarantees of high paying job opportunities, which they can secure for a few "modest" fees. However, usually the jobs prove less lucrative than promised, causing workers to become trapped in debt, Febrey says. Sometimes it takes upwards of two years to pay off the fees and earn just enough money to return home, no better off than they were when they started.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the bill's sponsor, said that America's indirect support of this "effective debt bondage" can no longer be tolerated.

"Our practices need to reflect our nation's fundamental commitments to freedom and human dignity, and most importantly, set an example for the rest of the world," he said.

Though the recruitment fees are strictly barred under a 2012 executive order, agencies have a hard time enforcing the rule because they lack a proper definition of what constitutes a recruitment fee.

"A prohibition is only enforced if people understand what is prohibited," Royce said.

The bill calls on these agencies to clearly define what recruitment fees will be prohibited, enabling the agencies to more effectively implement the law and hold contractors accountable.

"You don't want recruitment fees to become something that's abused," said Thomas Melito, who authored the GAO report. "This can create a very unpleasant power relationship and that's where the human trafficking angle comes in."

Melito believes the legislation will effectively prevent workers from entering into debt bondage, but only if "agencies take those words seriously."

The bill, approved in the House by voice vote, represented the government's most recent bid to bolster its zero-tolerance policy toward human trafficking. The act was co-sponsored by 28 legislators from both sides of the aisle.

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