US House OKs bill vs abuse of Pinoys, other foreign workers in CNMI

The US House of Representatives approved Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) the bill that seeks to end abuse of foreign workers – including Filipinos – in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. "With the enactment of this legislation, the dismal and degrading era of slave labor, forced prostitution and other horrific worker abuses by employers … will be put to rest," Rep. Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat from West Virginia and chairman of the House natural resources committee, said in a statement. H.R. 3079 or the NMI Immigration, Security and Labor Act (ISLA) calls for the US federal government's takeover of immigration control from the CNMI government. Under the present setup, the rights of alien workers, who make up 71 percent of the territory's 79,000 population, are limited, thereby making them susceptible to abuse by their employers. Instead of reporting to say, the CNMI Department of Labor their abusive employers, most foreign workers just suffered in silence for fear that their boss will retaliate and not renew their contract. Among the infractions employers commit are non-payment or delayed payment of wages and overtime, unauthorized deductions, barracks lockdown, and in some worse cases, forced prostitution. "We should all loathe that such a system was allowed to flourish, and that a corrupt lobbyist was able to stand in the way of reforms needed to secure for these workers the basic human rights we all deserve," Rahall said. The corrupt lobbyist he referred to was Jack Abramoff, whose influence prevented the then Republican-controlled Congress from passing a bill that will protect foreign workers. Virgin Islands Rep. Donna M. Christensen, chairwoman of the House subcommittee on insular affairs, said that reports about workers' abuse in the CNMI over the last 20 years have made it necessary for the Democrat-controlled Upper Chamber to pass the bill. "It is no secret that over the last 20 years, the CNMI came under great criticism for its immigration policies which left the territory with a nationwide, if not also an international, reputation – making this legislation necessary on several fronts," she said. US Department of Interior's deputy assistant secretary for insular affairs David B. Cohen said the passage of H.R. 3079 "a major milestone … to achieve flexible federalization of the CNMI's immigration system in a manner specifically tailored to the needs of the people of the CNMI." Cohen has recently earned the ire of CNMI Governor Benigno R. Fitial for pushing the congressional approval of ISLA. He has been a strong supporter of workers' rights in the Marianas and would not miss holding dialogues with workers every time he visited the island. In the US Senate, the committee on energy and natural resources, chaired by Sen. Jeff. Bingaman (D-0New Mexico), has yet to discuss its version of ISLA. S. 1634 also seeks to extend federal immigration laws to the CNMI. Unlike H.R. 3079, however, it aims to grant long-term foreign workers and their immediate families with a non-immigrant visa that would allow them to work, travel, and study in the US mainland. When all the members of the House committee on natural resources conducted a hearing, they agreed to amend ISLA and removed the grandfathering of alien workers clause. Such provision would have given foreigners who have been legally working in the CNMI for at least five years a non-immigrant status. An estimated 5,500 Filipinos on Saipan could have qualified to apply for a non-immigrant visa and join about 2.1 million of their "kababayans" in the US mainland. Filipinos on Saipan worked as accountants, clerks, engineers, construction workers, farmers, housekeepers, hotel or restaurant food servers, and journalists. In exchange for the grandfathering provision, Christensen, who sponsored HR 3079, proposed to include a provision that could give alien workers US citizenship by directing the US Department of the Interior to report to Congress the status of the alien workers in the CNMI two years after the bill was enacted. "Such recommendations … related to whether or not the Congress should consider permitting lawfully admitted guest workers … to apply for long-term status under the immigration and nationality laws of the US," page 21 of HR 3079 read. A US congressional staff privy to the drafting of the bill explained that such provision implicitly meant granting foreign workers citizenship. Christensen removed the grandfathering provision after officials from Guam, Hawai'i, and the American Samoa voiced their opposition. Besides protecting foreign workers, ISLA also seeks to tighten control of the CNMI borders to prevent smugglers and terrorists from gaining access to the mainland. - Jude O. Marfil-Schwalbach, GMANews.TV