Marianas sweatshop reform update-for those who were wondering [View All]

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

I was asking a few days ago why nothing had been done on this yet in the new congress, given the abramoff scandal and culture of corruption. Turns out, there has been some action. But they need to pass it as a seperate bill. They have the votes. They did even in the old GOP congress. It was Dolittle and co. refusing to allow a vote that stopped it.

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Last year, a new governor in Saipan demanded that Abramoff’s firms return all the money the government paid him over the years now that the commonwealth was getting nothing but bad publicity for having hired him. Abramoff lost his contract there in 2001.

And this year, Young’s longtime nemesis in House Resources, Democrat Rep. George Miller of California, inserted a provision in the Iraq spending bill that would extend the U.S. minimum wage to the commonwealth. The measure passed the House and Senate, but is expected to be vetoed by President Bush because of its deadline to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Miller, the new chairman of the ouse Labor & Education Committee, has been saying for years that failure to reform immigration and labor policy in the Marianas has not only enriched Abramoff and his clients, it’s caused real human suffering and threatened national security.

“The core corruption in the CNMI is the failure to apply our federal immigration laws to this part of the United States,” Miller said in a 1999 oversight hearing chaired by Young. “As a result, organized crime, communicable disease and human exploitation, directly attributable to the CNMI’s lax immigration laws, not only thrive in Saipan, but threaten every American. The time has long since passed to slam the door shut on these abuses and to restore federal law to the Marianas.”
more:
http://www.adn.com/front/story/8838799p-8739449c.html