Congress Pushes Controls Over Marianas

Forbes ^ | 12/1/2007 | JIM ABRAMS

[bruinbirdman]

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."

Tenorio, a strong supporter of the legislation, said the people of the Northern Marianas are proud and loyal Americans. Federalizing its immigration policy would help the commonwealth become a more integral part of the United States, he said.

The Bush administration backs the immigration provision as a means to prevent Saipan from becoming an entry point for terrorists and human smugglers, particularly as the Pentagon prepares to move some of its military personnel and facilities from Japan to Guam and the Northern Marianas.

But Fitial and his allies still oppose the legislation and have hired more GOP-connected lobbyists to make their case. Trent Duffy, a former White House deputy press secretary who co-founded the lobbying firm HDMK, said they are arguing the bill could throw thousands of people out of work, scare away investors and ruin the islands' fragile economy.

Proponents, he said, "are using the ghost of Jack Abramoff to push this bill along."

Testifying at a House hearing last August, Fitial said turning over immigration and guest-worker policies to bureaucrats living 8,500 miles away doesn't make sense.

"No Northern Marianas governor will be able to make the commitments necessary to attract investment to the commonwealth from predominantly Japanese, Korean and other Pacific Rim companies," he said.

He urged lawmakers to wait for a study, expected to be completed next spring, assessing the economic impact of the legislation. He said the current bill doesn't reflect recent successes in ending labor abuses and reducing reliance on foreign workers.

The islands are in a precarious economic state. The garment industry, which produced $1 billion worth of goods in 1999, is nearly defunct because China entered the World Trade Organization and can now sell its clothes at lower prices in the U.S. Tourism is down and government revenues have declined by a third over the past decade.

The commonwealth is now looking to Korean golf course and hotel investors, as well as English-language schools for foreign students, to get its economy back on track.

The bill is H.R. 3079.

[piasa]

Abramoff ping

There is significance to the Abramoff and Janus-Merritt references there: a firm called Janus Partners/Partner is listed in Federal Election Commission forms (for contributors to Congressman Christopher Cannon) as associated with Mark J. Robertson, president of Williams Mullen Strategies, a lobbying firm that has worked for both COTECNA (of Oil-for-Food fame) and Gabon. Robertson previously had arranged a US visit for Gabonese President Omar Bongo at the same time Bongo hired as lobbyists Pierre Salinger and Jacqueline Wilson (then in the process of divorcing Joseph--recently back from organizing Clinton's trip to Africa--but curiously listed in records as having a phone number at the $735,000 house Joseph and Valerie Plame purchased at that time, while Joseph was living separately in Valerie's apartment; over the next four years, Jacqueline would receive at least $712,000 from Gabon for her lobbying services). Robertson has more recently worked with USAID and Iraq's Minister of Infrastructure and Water to establish their respective roles in the Iraq Reconstruction efforts.
(As an aside of possible interest, Abramoff, Robertson, and Janus-Merritt Strategies have all contributed to Congressman Cannon, on whose staff David Safavian has worked. Another contributor to Cannon was Coastal Corp., the company of Oil-for-Food figure Oscar Wyatt.) 163 posted on 10/17/2005 11:47:56 AM PDT by Fedora | To 162

[cll]

The Northern Marianas, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands must become states. It is a shame that American citizens continue to live under apartheid.

“In my opinion, Congress has no existence and can exercise no authority outside of the Constitution. Still less is it true that Congress can deal with new territories just as other nations have done or may do with their new territories. This nation is under the control of a written constitution, the supreme law of the land and the only source of the powers which our government, or any branch or officer of it, may exert at any time or at any place. Monarchical and despotic governments, unrestrained by written constitutions, may do with newly acquired territories what this government may not do consistently with our fundamental law. To say otherwise is to concede that Congress may, by action taken outside of the Constitution, engraft upon our republican institutions a colonial system such as exists under monarchical governments. Surely such a result was never contemplated by the fathers of the Constitution. If that instrument had contained a word suggesting the possibility of a result of that character it would never have been adopted by the people of the United States. The idea that this country may acquire territories anywhere upon the earth, by conquest or treaty, and hold them as mere colonies or provinces,—the people inhabiting them to enjoy only such rights as Congress chooses to accord to them,—is wholly inconsistent with the spirit and genius, as well as with the words, of the Constitution.” - Justice John Harlan, dissenting in the Insular Cases, 1901

[Fedora]

Thanks!