It’s all about jobs

Re: “Human trafficking — it’s much closer than you think”, (Opinion, July 29).

Dana Graber Ladek offered a thoughtful explanation for increases in the trafficking of people. The middle of that article is devoted to making the jump in logic that says we are all complicit because we want products that are cheap.

OK! But let’s take that logic one step further. People are migrating, both legally and illegally, for any chance to work (to make those cheap products) because people outnumber jobs.

Like climate warming, this too is a change that has been sneaking up on us. I suspect I am a little older than Dana, but when I was born the world’s population was only about two and half billion people. Now it is rapidly approaching eight billion people. In recent months the Bangkok Post has published several articles about how robotics are expected to make huge inroads by 2030 into work of all types from fruit pickers to medical doctors. That will be another turning point. The criminal justice point of view will have no answer.

It is not just wars and natural disasters that cause huge waves of migration. It is a swelling surge of people with hopes to find a dying opportunity their fathers could once expect. That is the reason for trafficking.

My experience includes many examples of migration networks where people provide services. Many of those networks are conducted by people smart enough to not resort to brutality or deception. Trafficking is a migration issue, not a criminal justice issue, and it is time we recognise the way this has turned into a hysterical issue mostly arising in the United States, and keep these concerns in proper proportion. JOHN KANE