The Marianas is a U.S. territory in the western Pacific that, in 1986, was granted the right to set its own wage laws – lower than the federal minimum – and to control its own immigration flows outside of the federal immigration system. The local economy was founded on Chinese and Korean-owned garment factories using imported cheap labor, primarily poor women from China, the Philippines and Bangladesh who were lured to the islands under the pretense of working in America, and who made garments that were often labeled “Made in the USA.”

The reality was that tens of thousands of foreigners paid high recruitment fees only to end up as indentured servants working in sweatshops and suffering serious abuses, including having their wages withheld, being prohibited from leaving their overcrowded and unsanitary barracks, kept from practicing their religion, forced into the sex trade, or enduring forced abortions.

Widespread cases of wage underpayment and other violations of federal labor law have been documented, litigated and prosecuted, including a $20 million class action settlement between 54 retailers and the Commonwealth government to compensate and provide back-pay to up to 30,000 factory workers.

In 1992, the House Interior Committee, under Representative George Miller, held hearings on CNMI garment industry impacts on U.S. textiles.

In 1994, Republicans won control of House of Representatives.

Between 1994 and 2000, Abramoff represented the government of CNMI. In 1999, Abramoff was also contracted to represent the Western Pacific Economic Council, an organization formed to fight federal reform efforts in the CNMI, and from 2001-2002, Abramoff represented the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association – the textile industry association in the CNMI. According to a 1999 internal audit of the CNMI’s lobbying contracts, Abramoff and others were paid $8-10 million to represent the Marianas and the Saipan garment industry – a substantial sum given the CNMI’s $35 million budget deficit in 1998.

The Marianas’ local control of immigration not only contributed to labor and human rights abuses of poor women, but it also poses a potential security threat to the rest of the United States. The Department of Justice wrote its own report in 2001 at the request of the acting U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI that found that the lack of U.S. immigration controls “produces critical security obstacles” to U.S. interests and that “aggressive and immediate steps” are required to address these vulnerabilities.

Abramoff learned of the DoJ report in 2001 and used his influence over then Attorney General Ashcroft and others in the Bush Administration to quash its publication. Congress has never been presented a copy of this report and when recently pressed by Miller and other lawmakers for a copy, the Department refused.

Objective analysts have repeatedly found widespread immigration-related problems in the territory, including the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and the Federal-CNMI on Labor, Immigration, and Law Enforcement.

Working with Abramoff, Representative Tom DeLay became the islands’ most vocal supporter in Congress. Traveling there over New Year’s 1998, he told industry officials “you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system.” Later, he described the economy of the Marianas as “a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island.”

Jack Abramoff also lobbied the Bush White House and worked to position his allies in the Departments of Justice and the Interior to ensure no reforms were enacted.

Miller, as the ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee, conducted his own investigations, traveling to the islands in 1998 and preparing two reports with his staff at the House Resources Committee, where he served as the Senior Democrat. He introduced legislation in 1997, 1999, and 2001, to reform Mariana wage and immigration laws. The House never acted on the bills, even though in 2000 the Senate unanimously passed a Mariana Islands immigration reform bill. Similar legislation passed a Senate committee in 2001. No House action was ever taken.

The bill Miller and his colleagues are introducing, “The United States-Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Human Dignity Act,” would apply federal immigration control and U.S. minimum wage law to the CNMI and would close other legal loopholes that have badly distorted the local economy and injured thousands of workers.

What is the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands?

The Northern Mariana Islands are located in the western Pacific Ocean, north of Guam. In total, there are 14 islands including Saipan, Rota, and Tinian, but the vast majority of the Commonwealth’s population lives on Saipan.

The United States captured the islands from Japan during World War II. After the war, the U.S. established a trusteeship for the islands with the United Nations: the Mariana Islands District of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

A presidential proclamation in 1986 officially dissolved the trusteeship, establishing the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and granting American citizenship to qualified citizens of the CNMI.

Due to changes in international trade law, the garment industry is increasingly dominated by China; accordingly, the factories in the Marianas have begun to close. Many of the foreign workers are stranded in the Marianas without jobs, and some have gone into the sex trade in order to make ends meet.