Congress Pushes Controls Over Marianas

Tourists stand on the Banzai cliff on resort island of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, in this Sunday, June 26, 2005 file photo. Congress is trying again to exert more control over the Northern Marianas, this time minus the interference of jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who for years dissuaded lawmakers from tinkering with the troubled Pacific islands. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye) (Itsuo Inouye - AP)

WASHINGTON -- Congress is trying again to exert more control over the Northern Marianas, this time minus the interference of jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who for years dissuaded lawmakers from tinkering with the troubled Pacific islands.

Legislation that could clear the House in December would apply federal immigration and labor rules to the U.S. Commonwealth of The Northern Mariana Islands, which in the past three decades of local control has been tainted with charges of sweatshop and human trafficking abuses.

The bill is opposed by commonwealth Gov. Benigno Fitial, who says it ignores recent improvements in labor standards and could cripple attempts to revive the islands' depressed economy.

Over the past decade lawmakers have introduced several dozen bills addressing the Northern Marianas' immigration and labor practices and its right to use "Made in the USA" labels on garments made in factories employing poorly paid, poorly treated Chinese, Philippine and other Asian workers.

The lawmakers have little to show for their efforts. The lack of success was partly the work of Abramoff, now serving a six-year prison term on unrelated fraud charges.

The lobbyist received millions of dollars from the Marianas government to keep Washington at bay. He arranged trips to the 14-island chain for prominent lawmakers, including then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. DeLay returned from a 1997 trip to Saipan, the main island, praising its clothing factories and saying he believed they should keep their exemptions from U.S. labor law.

The Marianas, claimed by Magellan for Spain in 1521, went from Japanese to U.S. control after World War II. The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, took off from the Marianas island of Tinian.

The House bill, which cleared the Natural Resources Committee last month on a voice vote, extends federal immigration law to the commonwealth and creates a federally run guest-worker program that would eventually end foreign worker permits. Currently, up to 20,000 of the estimated 65,000 people on the islands are foreign nationals. Under the covenant of commonwealth approved in 1975, those native to the islands are U.S. citizens.

The bill would also give the Northern Marianas a delegate, with limited voting powers, in the House. Currently the House has delegates from the neighboring island of Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

The legislation follows up on a U.S. national minimum wage hike last spring that raised the minimum wage in the Northern Marianas from $3.05 to $3.55, with plans for further increases in coming years.

"This bill nails the coffin shut on the Abramoff era of undue political influence in the Congress," Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said after the committee vote.

"We were naive at that time," the commonwealth's elected representative to Washington, Pedro Tenorio, said in an interview. "We ended up paying lobbyists to defend us and as a consequence we got black eyes left and right."