Immigration Article of the Day: Bridging the Gap From Legalization to Legitimization: How Society Can Help Victims of Trafficking Beyond the T or U Visa  by Caleb Ohrn

Bridging the Gap From Legalization to Legitimization: How Society Can Help Victims of Trafficking Beyond the T or U Visa  by Caleb Ohrn Abstract An understanding of the background on how the T and U visa have come into effect is used to develop the long-term solutions that are proposed in the analysis section. Those in this battle to end human trafficking must realize that attaining temporary legal status in only the first of many hurdles. Even if victims are able to get permanency in the United States through a T visa or a U visa, there is a deficiency of resources that address the bigger issues of employment opportunities and long-term services that can heal with a multi-generational approach in order for victims to not become revictimized. The proposition being set forth is centered around long-term planning that not only will avoid revictimization, but will hopefully address long term positive solutions that are not solely band aids, but actually cause healing and a sense of legitimacy for the long-term success of victims. Moving from the basic background on human trafficking and how the T and U Visa came in to existence, next is addressing the positive aspects and deficiencies and where these resources currently are with helping victims of human trafficking is necessary in order to advance the objectives in the solutions aspect of the analysis. After setting forth the proposed solutions, each of the three-pronged approaches will be explored in depth and will provide suggestions that can be implemented on the micro-scale to have a lasting impact on the lives of victims. Currently, our legal system is solely focused on getting victims legal status and is not curtailed to long term sustainability and legitimization. Specifically, the three-pronged approach entails: survivor-informed leadership committees, securing long term employment in the United States and last, taking a multi-generational approach to healing not only the victims themselves, but taking a holistic family approach to this process of legitimization and healing.

KJ