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“HUMAN TRAFFICKING FOR FORCED LABOR IN AN AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S5980-S5981 on May 26, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
HUMAN TRAFFICKING FOR FORCED LABOR IN AN AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH
Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today to call your attention to a scandal in an American commonwealth. It is a scandal that involves forced labor and sex trade workers. It's not a pretty picture. It is a picture of a tropical paradise destroyed by greed and corruption.
In the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, foreign workers have been imported in mass to assemble goods for export to the United States. Taking advantage of loopholes in our immigration and labor laws, foreign businessmen use the Mariana Islands as a base to export garments to the United States. These foreign businessmen pay no export taxes, and their goods are not subject to textile quotas. Their workers are paid below minimum wage levels, if paid at all, and often live in deplorable conditions.
Women from Asia and Russia are imported with the promise of high paying jobs in the United States only to find themselves marooned with no means of escape, forced to work as prostitutes in the booming Mariana sex trade.
This long-running scandal has been exposed once again by the Global Survival Network. This American-based nongovernmental organization which uncovers human rights violations sent an undercover team to the CNMI to gather evidence on the continued use of forced labor in the commonwealth. They have just issued their report which was the subject of an ABC News segment on ``20/20.'' If you did not see the television broadcast, please read the report which I am sending to every Senator.
Entitled ``Trapped: Human Trafficking for Forced Labor in The Commonwealth of The Northern Mariana Islands (a U.S. Territory),'' the report demonstrates in disturbing detail the continued trafficking of humans for indentured labor in factories and sex trade emporiums in the Marianas. Implicating organized crime groups from the People's Republic of China, South Asia, and Japan, the report estimates that there are about 40,000 indentured workers in the CNMI, earning about $160 million in profits for criminal syndicates.
Indentured workers are being used to manufacture ostensibly as ``Made in the USA'' garments for export to the United States. None of these goods are required to be shipped to the U.S. on U.S.-flag ships in accordance with the Jones Act. This duty-free, quota-free zone in which foreign workers produce high value goods at below minimum wage is an entirely legal scheme for Chinese and other foreign manufacturers to bypass American textile quotas.
The report also graphically details the increasing use of CNMI's loose immigration standards to make this former tropical paradise a major center for the booming Asian sex trade. Women from Asia and Russia are being lured to the Northern Marianas with promises of work opportunities in the United States only to find themselves imprisoned on islands from which there is no escape unless they agree to their employer's demands that they become prostitutes and sex hostesses. This sick trade in prostitution must be stopped.
Loopholes in the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 need to be plugged as soon as possible. I hope you will join me in ending this deplorable situation in which men and women are being used virtually as slaves on an American commonwealth.
Their report makes many important recommendations. Let me call your attention to four key issues which the Congress could and should act upon this year:
Extend the Immigration and Nationality Act to the CNMI;
Extend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to the CNMI;
Revoke the CNMI's ability to use the ``Made in the USA label'' unless more than 75 percent of the labor that goes into the manufacture of the garment comes from U.S. citizens and/or aliens lawfully admitted to the U.S. for permanent residence, and other appropriately legal individuals; and
Revoke the CNMI's ability to transport textile goods to the United States free of duties and quotas unless the garments meet the above criteria.
This week's report prepared by the Global Survival Network is not the first analysis raising concerns about conditions in the CNMI. In recent years, a chorus of criticism has surfaced about the Commonwealth.
For example, the Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that the CNMI has no reliable records of aliens who have entered the Commonwealth, how long they remain, and when, if ever, they depart. A CNMI official testified that they have ``no effective control'' over immigration in their island.
The bipartisan Commission on Immigration studied immigration and indentured labor in the CNMI. The Commission called it ``antithetical to American values,'' and announced that no democratic society has an immigration policy like the CNMI. ``The closest equivalent is Kuwait,'' the Commission found.
The Department of Commerce found that the territory has become ``a Chinese province'' for garment production.
The CNMI garment industry employs 15,000 Chinese workers, some of whom sign contracts that forbid participation in religious or political activities while on U.S. soil. China is exporting its workers, and its human rights policies, to the CNMI. Charges of espionage by China and security lapses in U.S. nuclear weapons labs have justifiably raised serious concerns in Congress. Every Member of Congress should be equally concerned with the imposition of Chinese human rights standards on American soil.
The CNMI is becoming an international embarrassment to the United States. We have received complaints from the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh about immigration abuses and the treatment of workers.
Despite efforts by the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations to persuade the CNMI to correct these problems, the situation has only deteriorated.
After years of waiting for the CNMI to achieve reform, the time for patience has ended. Conditions in the CNMI are a looming political embarrassment to our country.
I urge the Senate to respond by enacting S. 1052, bipartisan reform legislation introduced by my colleagues on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Chairman Murkowski and Senator Bingaman.
I urge the Senate to move on this measure as quickly as we can.
Ms. COLLINS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized.
(The remarks of Ms. Collins pertaining to the introduction of S. 1124 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, are we in morning business, and are there time limits?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business until 10:15. The Senator is authorized to speak for up to 10 minutes.
Mr. GORTON. I thank the Chair.
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