Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone and Kansas Republican Sam Brownback
WASHINGTON - It could be life behind bars for sex slavers if bills by two U.S. Senators go all the way to a Presidential signature. The bills were introduced April 12.
Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone and Kansas Republican Sam Brownback say they plan individual bills targeting a criminal enterprise the CIA claims brings at least fifty thousand women and girls into the United States annually to work as sex slaves. They both want life for those trafficking children under 14 and twenty years for those trafficking people 14 and older for the sex trade.
"Our estimates are that 700,000 primarily young girls are trafficked a year. It's one of the most awful aspects of the new global economy," Brownback told a conference.
Brownback's bill seeks automatic sanctions imposed on the most serious violators among countries which don't meet "minimum standards" to erase the sex slave trade, says the Associated Press, while Wellstone's would give the President discretions to impose economic sanctions. A bill under consideration in the House of Representatives is said to take an approach similar to the Wellstone bill.
But the two senators aren't exactly saying my-way-or-the-highway on the issue. Both Brownsback and Wellstone say they'll back whichever of the two gets past the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
