Illegal Immigration, Human Trafficking, and Organized Crime / Free republic, 28 Nov 2005

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1530000/posts
Raimo V�yrynen - University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA ^
"It is important to make a careful distinction between illegal immigration, human smuggling, and human trafficking which are nested, but yet different concepts. This distinction is relevant because these different categories of the illegal movement of people across borders have quite different legal and political consequences. Human smuggling and trafficking have become a world-wide industry that 'employs' every year millions of people and leads to the annual turnover of billions of dollars. Many of the routes and enclaves used by the smugglers have become institutionalized; for instance, from Mexico and Central America to the United States, from West Asia through Greece and Turkey to Western Europe, and within East and Southeast Asia. More often than not flourishing smuggling routes are made possible by weak legislation, lax border controls, corrupted police officers, and the power of the organized crime."