Migrant Workers In Australia

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TRAFFICKING PREVENTION - ITS TIME FOR ACTION History tells us that punitive approaches to sex work have never been successful. Yet there will be many lawyers wages paid out of the investment by the Victorian Crown into the criminal prosecution of a Melbourne brothel owner for slavery. Now that the case has been supported, the Victorian Crown will herd more cases into court. These cases are the result of years of surveillance, constant raids, and a forest of media that has mounted public pressure against the Asian brothel sector in Victoria. Migrant sex workers are the collateral damage in this morally charged war against sex...Link to full story.

TRUTH AND VISAS WILL SET ASIAN SEX WORKERS FREE The stereotype of the Asian sex slave captures the Australian imagination. When Puangthong Simaplee died in immigration detention in 2001, a story emerged of a girl trafficked to Australia at the age of 12 and forced to have sex as a slave. Her story was given under duress, after the Department of Immigration had taken her into detention, during the first phases of the pneumonia that eventually killed her...Link to full story.

Our Migrant Working Comrades

Many overseas sex workers choose to come to Australia to work in the sex industry for the good pay and better conditions here. Unfortunately due to their illegal status as migrant worker ie they don’t have permission to be in Australia and/or to work here, overseas sex workers are criminalised and work in fear of immigration discovering their activities.

Australia has a very restrictive and arguably racist immigration policy that favours access to our country to those people with wealth and power. Therefore people from poorer regions and lower socioeconomic backgrounds are disadvantaged. Many sex workers from Asian countries who are overwhelmingly women would never gain access to Australia under these stringent conditions and so in order to gain a visa, many migrant sex workers enter into ‘contracts’ with people who will sponsor and assist their entry into Australia. This ‘contract’ arrangement is illegal under Federal Immigration & Sex Slavery Laws, and sex workers are considered to have been ‘trafficked’ into the Australian sex industry.

The illegal status of overseas sex workers mitigates against many migrant workers in Australia from fully accessing health and other support services for fear of detection by Government authorities.

In the vast experience of Scarlet Alliance through its membership of State & territory sex worker organisations and projects the overwhelming majority of overseas sex workers have chosen to work in the Australian sex industry and have willingly entered into ‘contracts’ with agents to facilitate their passage and working arrangements whilst in Australia.

The coercive, ‘servile or slave-like ‘conditions that some sex workers find themselves in upon arrival are a direct result of the relative powerlessness of these illegal workers to negotiate the conditions of their employment and other conditions.

Therefore Scarlet Alliance recommends that the sex industry must be fully decriminalised in order to maximize OHS, industrial and other regulatory mechanisms. The powerlessness and potential for exploitation of illegal migrant workers is further compounded when they are working in an illegal and underground industry.

Scarlet Alliance further recommends that the way to end "slavery" is to "free" the "slaves" by giving them rights and legal status, through legislation which will increase their power to reject slave-like contracts and conditions. Removal of the incentives and opportunities for "traders" to ‘traffic’ sex workers to Australia is created by an open, legal system of entry to Australia for overseas sex workers. Taken from Sex Workers Outreach Project response to the Criminal Code Amendment (Slavery and Sexual Servitude) Bill 1998

It is clear that a punitive approach which targets the agents who facilitate passage into Australia of Asian sex workers will achieve little without the consideration of the complexity of the issues involved. The Australian Government must consider the rights of undocumented migrant sex workers as central to any public policy response… (Taken from Scarlet Alliance response to Discussion Paper #9, ‘Slavery’ Attorney General’s Committee)

Related Articles, Links and Submissions

Scarlet Alliance Submission to the 2008 US State Department Trafficking In Persons Report Download PDF

Scarlet Alliance Migration Working Party Anti-Trafficking Activities and Advocacy for Migrant Sex Workers Download PDF

The other side of the sex slave debate, By Yolanda Corduff. First published in EROS Vol 5 Number 3. go to Eros article on external website

Link to R v Wei Tang (2007) Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal Ruling, 27 June 2007, Court of Appeal Decision, 29 June 2007 and related media

Submission on Proposed Amendments to the Federal Criminal Code 2004 Scarlet Alliance expresses concern over the Attorney General (Phillip Ruddocks) proposals to broaden the reach of Australian law in relation to the sex industry, limit the movement of migrant sex workers across domestic borders in Australia, and in general put more pressure on the sex industry in Australia as a site of illegal migrant labour.

Submission to Parliamentary Joint Committee; Trafficking in Women for Sexual Servitude This submission draws on Scarlets' premier position as the single organisation in Australia that has the most contact with migrant sex workers. Presented in 2003, this inquiry was the precurser to the 2005 changes to the Federal Criminal Code.

Thai Senate Delegation on the process of public participation SWOP June 2002 This document is written by Thai sex workers about the need for sex workers to be at the centre of the public policy debate about migrant sex workers.

RESPONSE TO THE CRIMINAL CODE AMENDMENT (SLAVERY AND SEXUAL SERVITUDE) BILL 1998 Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) August 1998 This document was released to Members of Parliament during the debate around Sexual Slavery in 1998. It covers Contracts, Working Conditions, The Right to Work and Travel, Women’s experiences and media misrepresentation, the effects of the proposed legislation and alternative solutions from the perspective of the organisation closest to these workers.

Briefing Paper CHAPTER 9; OFFENCES AGAINST HUMANITY; ‘SLAVERY’ Scarlet Alliance Addressed to the Standing Committee of the Attorneys-General (all State and Federal Attorney General’s) regarding the proposed changes (now law) to Australia’s treatment of people who migrate to Australia for sex work. Scarlet Alliance argues strongly that migrant workers in Australia need legitimisation, not criminalisation. “The most important support that the Australian Government could provide for these workers is to ratify the UN International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (the ‘Migrant Workers Convention’).”

Submission on Sexual Slavery Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Susan Halliday, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, August 1998 Written in response to a Discussion Paper on Slavery from the Criminal Law Division of the Attorney-General’s Department