the tariffs will not last

“People don’t like to answer an advert for criminal scamming, and it’s hard to advertise that. But once they’re there, it’s like – actually, we will pay you. We may have taken your passport, but there is a route to quite a lucrative opportunity here and we will give you a small part of that,” he said.The issue of salaries paid to coerced and enslaved workers complicates efforts to repatriate trafficking victims, who may be considered complicit criminals due to their status as “paid” workers in the scam centres, said Eric Heintz, from the US-based anti-trafficking organisation International Justice Mission (IJM).

“We know of individuals being paid for the first few months they were inside, but then it tapers off to the point where they are making little – if any – money,” Heintz said, describing how victims become “trapped in this cycle of abuse unable to leave the compound”.“This specific aspect was a challenge early on with the victim identity process – when an official would ask if an individual previously in the scam compound was paid, the victim would answer that initially he or she was. That was enough for some officials to not identify them as victims,” Heintz said.Some workers have also been sold between criminal organisations and moved across borders to other scam centres, he said.

“We have heard of people being moved from a compound in one country to one in another – for example from Myawaddy to the GTSEZ or Cambodia and vice versa,” he said.Khobby said many of the workers in his “office” had already had experience with scamming in other compounds and in other countries.

“Most of them had experience. They knew the job already,” he said.

“This job is going on in a lot of places – Thailand, Laos, Myanmar. They were OK because they got paid. They had experience and they knew what they were doing,” he added.China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the US, behind India. Chinese students made up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the US during the 2023-2024 academic year – more than 270,000 in total.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised the decision to revoke visas, saying it “damaged” the rights of Chinese students. “The US has unreasonably cancelled Chinese students’ visas under the pretext of ideology and national rights,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.The Trump administration also banned

from enrolling any foreign students on May 22, accusing the institution of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”. That move has since beenby a US federal judge.