Nursing Homes: A Growing Target for Labor Traffickers | Psychology Today

Of the ten thousand Baby Boomers turning 65 each day in the United States, more than one-third will spend at least some time in a nursing home. Unfortunately, the need for more workers in nursing homes and other elder-care services creates an opportunity for human traffickers, specifically labor traffickers.

Human traffickers are by definition individuals who use force, fraud, or coercion, to exploit workers. According to Phyllis Ayman, a speech and language pathologist who is an advocate for quality nursing-home care, “The industry and situation are ripe for traffickers, who see an industry already burdened with short staffing.”

Illegal Working Conditions

The multi-billion-dollar elder-care industry, she observes, is vulnerable to unscrupulous owners and operators who “become wealthy on the backs of workers they treat like indentured servants.” Abuses she's seen the labor traffickers engage in include:

• Illegally low wages
• Illegally long hours
• Living conditions people would not endure except through coercion.

Technically, such practices are illegal. She closely follows the court cases where perpetrators are fined or jailed, and she knows that in proportion to the scale of the problem, prosecutions today are too rare to be a sufficiently effective deterrent.

Debt Bondage

Another common abuse is debt bondage. Take the 2019 case against SensotaCare, the largest nursing home provider in New York. Thirty women from the Philippines were offered a nursing home job in the United States. They were excited to come to the U.S., but once they began working for SensotaCare, they learned that they each would have to pay $25,000 to SensotaCare if they left their jobs there.

The women couldn't possibly earn that much, especially since they were being paid significantly less than the prevailing wages. A judge ruled that the Philippina workers were victims of debt bondage and that the owners of SensotaCare had violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Immigrants Are Particularly Vulnerable

Immigrants are traffickers' preferred victims. Traffickers hold the threat of deportation as well as document confiscation over them to maintain control of them.

Their lack of familiarity with U.S. laws and customs heightens their appeal to traffickers, It give traffickers leverage to convince their victims that they're in personal danger from law enforcement if they report their situation or seek help from social service providers.

Psychological Damage to Trafficking Victims

According to Ayman, “The psychological effects of trafficking on the mental health of individual living and working under duress are similar to those of other forms of extreme trauma. In fact, the devastation may leave its mark on a person's life forever in the form of PTSD, depression, anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame.”

As with other forms of forced helplessness and trauma, the harm may also include memory loss, difficulty in relationships and, potentially, self-harm. Difficulty with relationships often manifest as numbness, hadly desirable for someone giving care to a frail, sick or infirm older adult.

Ayman emphasizes that most nursing homes are decent and compassionate places. However, given the financial incentive for labor traffickers to exploit eldercare workers, she'd like society at large to be more alert to the problem.

The increasing number of nursing homes and home-care agencies springing up to care for older adults only expands the problem. Recognizing it exists is a necessary first step for addressing it.