Democrats Renew Push for Mariana Labor Bill

[Wayne_Zitkus]

I urge everyone to read the entire article - especially HFC, who seems to believe that Republicans like Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, and George W. Bush are such honest men and good Christians.

Democrats Renew Push for Mariana Labor Bill

Legislation Blocked by DeLay Extends Controls Over U.S. Territory

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 7, 2006; 5:06 PM

House Democrats led by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) introduced legislation today to extend key federal controls over a U.S. territory in the western Pacific, renewing an effort that was blocked for years by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and once-powerful Texas Republican Tom DeLay.

The bill aims to apply U.S. immigration law and basic labor protections, including the U.S. minimum wage, to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a U.S. territory 3,900 miles west of Hawaii.

Human rights and labor investigators have found rampant abuses there over the years, notably the trafficking of women for a commercial sex trade and the exploitation of mostly female workers from poor Asian countries in a largely foreign-owned garment-manufacturing industry that uses the territory to turn out "Made in U.S.A." clothing exempt from U.S. tariffs and quotas.

As a lobbyist for the Northern Marianas government and, subsequently, the garment industry on the main island of Saipan, Abramoff enlisted DeLay and other Republican leaders in a battle against the Clinton administration, human rights groups, labor unions and a bipartisan group
of lawmakers to preserve local control over immigration and the minimum wage.

In a 2001 pitch letter obtained by The Washington Post, Abramoff boasted to the then-governor of the commonwealth that his lobbying team had worked with DeLay and other congressional leaders to bottle up reform
legislation, stymied the efforts of Republican critics such as former Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska and obtained "extra CNMI appropriations" from Congress for infrastructure projects on the islands of Tinian and
Rota.

Now that Abramoff is headed to prison for fraud in a separate case and DeLay is leaving the House under indictment for alleged political money laundering in Texas, Miller and his allies hope their efforts to rein in the commonwealth will finally succeed.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060701673.html

[1300 Class]

Intereing in states rights again. If the Commonwealth doesn't want to place laws, then the federal government should not force it to accept its stanards. A question of state and territory rights.