[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 10 (Wednesday, February 11, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E130-E131]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER REPORTS RAMPANT LABOR ABUSES IN U.S. COMMONWEALTH

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 11, 1998

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the following article is the 
second of two that appeared in the February 9, 1998 Philadelphia 
Inquirer and describes the plights of tens of thousands of foreign 
workers who live and labor in one of our U.S. territories, the 
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). This article, 
``For Workers, Island Jobs can be a Losing Proposition,'' describes the 
desperate situations of these workers once they arrive in the CNMI 
deeply in debt and prone to exploitation.
  Every independent reporter who has traveled to the CNMI to 
investigate the working and living conditions of the tens of thousands 
of imported foreign workers there has found that the principles behind 
the labor and immigration situation in the CNMI are contrary to those 
defined by established ideals of American democracy. The CNMI economy 
is based on the exploitation of a large, disenfranchised, foreign 
population, and laws to protect these workers on U.S. soil are neither 
being adequately applied, nor enforced, and perpetrators of justice are 
not being punished.
  The article describes fifty-five men from China who each paid $7,000 
to a Chinese recruiter for ``transportation, passports, and the promise 
of construction jobs. Most had to borrow money from friends, family 
members or loan sharks.'' Once they arrived in the CNMI, these men 
found no jobs waiting. Although the men marched in protest to the 
offices of the U.S. Department of Labor, the federal government could 
not help them because the CNMI has sole authority over immigration 
policy and controlling recruiters.
  A similar story is repeated for 134 men from Bangladesh who paid 
$5,000 to recruiters for jobs that did not exist. In both cases, the 
recruiters responsible for bringing these men from China and Bangladesh 
to the CNMI have fled, while the men remain disenchanted, hungry and 
desperate for employment.
  The article also details the story of one 22 year old Chinese worker 
who tells of being summoned four times by her garment factory 
supervisor in his attempts to pressure her into returning to China to 
have an abortion after she became pregnant. The worker refused to have 
an abortion and, after losing several days of work because of a 
pregnancy related illness, was fired. She is now jobless and fears 
deportation back to China, where she would likely be subjected to a 
late-term abortion because she is unmarried.
  Nowhere else in America would these practices be allowed to continue. 
Congress must act to change this situation. I have introduced 
legislation, HR 1450--the ``Insular Fair Wage and Human Rights Act'' 
that would place the CNMI immigration system under federal law, 
bringing the CNMI into conformity with every other U.S. territory. 
Further, this legislation will incrementally increase the local minimum 
wage until it reaches the federal level, and provide that garments only 
be allowed to bear the ``Made in USA'' label if all federal laws were 
adhered to in the manufacture of the garment. Passage of this 
legislation would bring additional federal oversight to the policies 
practiced in this remote corner of America.

             [From the Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 8, 1998]

          For Workers, Island Jobs Can Be a Losing Proposition

                           (By Jennifer Lin)

       Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.--They arrive on the red-
     eye flight from Hong Kong pulling little suitcases on wheels 
     into the humid, predawn blackness. Poor, tired and hungry for 
     work, these young men and women from China are hoping for a 
     slice of the American Dream.
       They have paid thousands of dollars to agents at home for 
     jobs in clothing factories on this faraway island that few 
     can find on a map. At the airport, they stand out from the 
     Japanese tourists heading off to luxury hotels on blossom-
     scented beaches. They are whisked away by waiting van's to 
     spartan barracks.
       For many desperate Asians, dreams of working in America 
     have turned into living nightmares in Saipan. Men from 
     Bangladesh and China have turned over their life savings to 
     middlemen for jobs that never materialize. Young women from 
     the Philippines have come to work in bars and been forced 
     into prostitution. Garment workers from China have found 
     themselves toiling in sweatshops for employers who cheat them 
     out of their wages or limit their freedom.
       Chinese garment worker Tu Xiaomei, 22 and pregnant, is one 
     of the many unlucky ones. She is broke, jobless, and fearful 
     of being deported.

[[Page E131]]

       Tu arrived in Saipan in the summer of 1996 and planned to 
     work in a garment factory for two years. At a $3.05-an-hour 
     sewing job here, she could earn more in one year than in four 
     back home.
       She fell in love with a Chinese laborer and became 
     pregnant. When her factory found out, Tu said, it pressured 
     her to return to China to have an abortion. She said a 
     supervisor summoned her four times to deliver the same 
     message.
       ``She didn't say, `You must go back to China for an 
     abortion.' '' Tu said, ``but she always said, `Think about 
     it.' ''
       It is difficult to get an abortion on this predominantly 
     Catholic island. But in China, abortion is widely used as a 
     form of birth control for women limited by the government to 
     one child. In Tu's home province of Jiangxi, women, by law, 
     are not allowed to marry until they are 23 and may not 
     legally bear a child until they are 24.
       Tu refused to have the abortion. She wanted to work until 
     the baby was born (she is due in May) and return to China 
     only after her two-year contract with the factory had expired 
     in July.
       But in December, she missed several days of work because of 
     a pregnancy-related illness. Her boss at the factory, owned 
     by mainland Chinese and Hong Kong investors, told her not to 
     come back, she said.
       Steve Yim, a Hong Kong-based management adviser for the 
     factory, Micronesian Garment Manufacturing Inc., denied that 
     anyone pressured Tu to return to China for an abortion and 
     said she ``deliberately'' stopped going to work.
       Six months pregnant, Tu now rents a room near a busy road. 
     Her bed consists of two wood planks on blocks. She has little 
     food on her shelves and no money to see a doctor. Her biggest 
     fear, she said, is being forced to return to China, where she 
     would risk being pressured to undergo a late-term abortion.
       ``I don't want to have an abortion,'' Tu said. ``It's a 
     small life; it's six months old. I'm afraid.''
       The tens of thousands of foreigners brought to Saipan as 
     ``guest workers'' are recruited by middlemen who operate in a 
     murky business that is loosely regulated and open to abuse. 
     Local recruiters who promise to find jobs for foreigners work 
     in tandem with agents in such places as China, Bangladesh, 
     Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
       Fifty-five Chinese men from northeast China said they 
     arrived here in September, only to find there were no jobs 
     waiting. The men, recruited from a down-and-out industrial 
     region of China with high unemployment, each paid $7,000 to a 
     Chinese agent for transportation, passports, and the promise 
     of construction jobs. Most had to borrow money from friends, 
     family members or loan sharks, they said.
       For weeks, the men were holed up in a dirty, hot, crowded, 
     metal barracks near a golf course with an ocean view. They 
     had little to eat and limited fresh water, they said. J&J 
     International, the employer who had promised them work, had 
     only been able to place a few of them.
       On Oct. 21, the rest of the men marched in protest to the 
     offices of the U.S. Department of Labor, carrying a banner 
     that read, in English and Chinese: ``We need live. We need 
     work.''
       The U.S. federal government could not help them. One of the 
     unique things about the Northern Mariana Islands is that the 
     local government has full authority over immigration. It also 
     is responsible for policing recruiters.
       Kim Long, an employee for J&J International, said in 
     December that the company had found work for 10 men and that 
     the others were seeking too much money, demanding wages of $5 
     an hour instead of the island's minimum wage of $3.05 an 
     hour.
       The men told a different story. They said they would work 
     for any wage at all.
       In a letter to U.S. labor officials in October, they wrote, 
     in Chinese: ``Many Chinese regard the United States as heaven 
     on earth. But there are swindlers out there who dare to bring 
     shame to the American government.''
       The jobless laborers protested again in December. This 
     time, having been kicked out of their barracks, they carried 
     bedrolls under their arms. Embarrassed local officials went 
     on television to seek jobs for the men and leaned on garment 
     factories to find them work.
       Some of the men got work building a casino on a neighboring 
     island. About a dozen became so frustrated that they returned 
     to China.
       Another batch of workers from Bangladesh, meanwhile, has 
     not been as fortunate.
       In early 1997, 134 men from Bangladesh paid $5,000 apiece 
     to recruiters for jobs that, as it turned out, did not exist. 
     The local go-between, responsible for arranging the work in 
     Saipan, fled to the Philippines.
       Today, many of the men are still without work, left to 
     scrounge for food and shelter, fearful of being deported and 
     knowing that angry loan sharks would be on their tails back 
     home.
       Naive and unschooled, many of these workers believed the 
     tall tales they heard from unscrupulous recruiters. One was 
     promised a U.S. passport as soon as he got here. Another said 
     he was told he could take a bus from Saipan to California. He 
     is still looking for work.

     

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