AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000, 2011) created new conditional residency visas and new avenues for American citizenship for the victims of human trafficking. Thai migrants have benefited from its provisions, but their disproportionate presence in this category has indicated the depths of this problem within the Thai immigrant community. This paper examines anti-trafficking advocacy, and it begins by criticizing existing Asian American pan-ethnic organizations. It addresses the limits of their approaches, and argues that ethnic-specific organizations still play an important role in helping victims as well as the ethnic communities in which they will settle.