Friday I posted Jon Tester Rocks and Change is in the Air (CNMI Hearing Report #1), my first take on the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 2-8-2007 CNMI Hearing.
As I mentioned, it was a hopeful event. The 110th Congress has thrown down a marker that they are serious about reforming the system of abuse that has been allowed to flourish on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) for at least a quarter of a century.
Still, one has to be wary.
Every effort to end the abuse over the last 25 years has failed. For the first dozen years it was because it was hard to get the word out and hard to get anybody in Washington to pay attention to the problems of a small chain of islands in the Western Pacific. After 1995 it was because of Jack Abramoff and the Republican Party.
Both of those excuses are gone. If we fail now it will be a failure of the Democratic Party.
We can not let that happen.
We have to end the cycle of abuse. To the jump...
Now, when I say the excuses for inaction are gone, I mean that they have lost most of their effectiveness. It is still hard to get the word out about the abuse and the need for reform, but more and more people are becoming aware of the issue. And there are still powerful forces within the Republican Party and Right-wing World who will work to protect the abuse and block or water down any reform. They will do this to maintain their delusions of morality and their fiction that the system on the CNMI was a free market marvel. The modern Republican Party is great at embracing fantasy as truth, happy talk as fact and wishes as action.
I say the excuses are gone because Democratic control of the 110th Congress means that, for the first time in six years, the reality based community has a voice in policy once again.
We can and should end the abuse on the CNMI.
Fixing the long-standing problems of the Territory can only begin with the extension of US labor, immigration and custom laws to the CNMI and the increase to the minimum wage.
Anything less than that, is a half measure guaranteed to fail and guaranteed to condemn more workers to abuse.
The old guard of the CNMI, the Pirates of Saipan, claim that the worst abuse is long over, that their local control of labor, immigration and custom laws is working just fine. They even claim that there is no need for reform.
That is what they said in their testimony and in their prepared statements. The Saipan Tribune article about their appearance was headlined, Govt, biz defend status quo:
The Fitial administration and the local business sector at least spoke with one voice before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, both insisting that the Commonwealth has a labor and immigration system that works.
It is a system that does work. The only problem is that it works to enrich a group of folks who have been profiting for 25 years from a system of human trafficking, forced sex, sweatshops, labor abuse, money laundering, gambling, drug smuggling, gun running and other profit centers born in the dark shadows of the global economy and the human heart.
I found this graph in the article interesting (emphasis added):
In addition, he [Lt. Gov. Villagomez] said the CNMI government has worked with federal agencies in numerous investigations and criminal prosecutions dealing with matters such as alien smuggling, international firearms trafficking, and human trafficking.
It underscores a comment I made yesterday about what was at the heart of the Abramoff scandal:
Jack essentially was a bag man for those Republicans who wanted to create one-party rule in the USA. They have been working towards this goal since the late 1970s. Jack's key role was to get untraceable money into the system for off-the-books operations. Finding ways to wash a lot of money is a key requirement when hiding the source of funds flowing into the political system.
Jack had a bit role in the Iran-Contra scandal in his formative years. That was another effort to get off-the-books money into the system to free President Reagan from the constraints of Congressional oversight and US laws.
It was a system with three legs: guns, drugs and cash. Abramoff's genus was to add a fourth leg to the money washing stool: gambling.
I've know that for years, but I have spent most of my research looking at the money and gambling legs of the scandal. Senator Tester reminded me about the drugs (and the guns).
Senator Tester’s questions about smuggling the active ingredients of methamphetamines through the CNMI (you can watch him on this webcast of the Hearing) reminded me to remember the drug and gun legs of the money laundering system. And right on cue, Villagomez highlights international firearms trafficking on the CNMI.
I would hope the 110th Congress and the Department of Justice spend some time looking into who is buying and selling these weapons and just how long the CNMI has been a place for arms traffickers to meet and greet.
It makes sense because you do not need a visa to get there and they are in charge of their own customs, which means the Pirates of Saipan—and not the Federal Government—has oversight of what is loaded and unloaded on the cargo ships moving in and out of the CNMI.
Call me madcap, but I think that is crazy. Especially in the post 9-11 world.
Gun running, money laundering and drug smuggling should be enough to mandate strong and urgent action to reform the system of the CNMI. I would even argue that the failure to extend US labor, immigration and custom laws to the CNMI is a threat to America. It is certainly more urgent story for the media to cover than the nonsense about what plane Nancy Pelosi rides (hey Lou Dobbs, I got you a real story to cover when you’re ready to do news again).
But wait there’s more.
The CNMI is also a center of human trafficking: the buying, selling and exploiting human being for sweatshops, labor abuse and the sex trade.
One of the speakers at the CNMI Hearing was a young woman from the Philippians Kayleen Entena. Her written statement is chilling and all too familiar for those of us following the decades of abuse on the CNMI:
I was looking forward to earning money to help my family and to go back to college. My Mom did not want me to go to Saipan. She was worried because everything happened so fast. I told her I wanted to go because I trusted what Sir Ed and Arnel were telling me.
I arrived on Saipan early in the morning. Sir Ed was on the plane with us from the Philippines. His wife met us at the airport. She told us to call her Mamasong. They took us to the restaurant; they showed me to my room and told me to take a rest. Later in the afternoon when I woke up Mamasong came to my room and gave me a box of small yellow pills and a box of condoms. She told me to take one pill everyday, she told me it would make me feel good and that the pills were for my health. I did not question the box of condoms because I did not look inside the box when she gave it to me.
I remember after about one hour Mamasong knocked on my door she was with a guy, I think he was a Korean.' Mamasong told me to massage him. I was shocked. I did not know what kind of massage. Mamasong left. I started massaging they guy's back, he told me "not that kind, I already paid Mamasong", then he said you "give me satisfaction". I did not know what I was going to do, I was scared, I started crying, I told him, "I don't like, I don't like", he then started to rape me. I started crying, the man complained to Mamasong, he told her "your girl is no good", he wanted a "yellow massage", which is having sex with a guy. Four men raped me in this same way on my first day in Saipan.
This kind of thing went on for almost ten days to me and the other girl from the Philippines. [snip]
I wanted to kill myself, but the girl with me told me "don't do that, we came here together, God is here with us and He will help us, He will not forsake us". She told me we have to be strong. She said, " I have a son and I need to be strong because of my son. You, you are the eldest in your family so you need to be strong too. When we have the opportunity we will run away".[snip]
Later that same night when Mamasong was busy with the customers we ran away and kept on running to where the young guys told us to meet them. The guys were waiting for us; they took us to one of their houses. One of the guy's mom helped us, we told her our story and she called Immigration. Finally they took us to Karidat. I am not sure what would have happened to me if all these people didn't help me.
I want the CNMI Government and Immigration officials to revise or make their requirements stricter especially for entering Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. I am hoping that this kind of illegal system will stop, the way it happened to me, the way I was treated. I do not want this to happen to anyone. I know that there are other women out in the community like me. They are just afraid to speak out because they don't know where to go or just because they have to support their family back home. Please help change the way the government functions here on the CNMI. If there's no change or people are not held responsible for their actions then it will continue to happen to innocent victims. I hope you will hear my wish. I am forever grateful.
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of these abuse narratives gathered from the "guest workers" to the CNMI over the last 25 years. Some are about labor abuse, some inhuman conditions, some were about forced prostitution, force sex and even forced abortions. Some were in gathered by lawyers and human rights workers. Some made their way into letters and reports to Congress. Some victims testified in a Hearing just like Kayleen. Here is what a young woman named Katrina told the Senate in 1998:
Statement of Female Minor
Before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Hearing on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
March 31, 1998
When I came to Saipan in 1995, 1 was 14. My passport said I was 21 and I was a tourist. My boss told me in the Philippines that I would be a dancer but not naked. The first day he forced us to dance naked. He said don't tell your age or that you are a tourist. I was shocked. He said if you don't follow me, the door is open. Buy your own ticket and pay back the $1,000 promotion fee. I had no choice. I had no money. I was so scared. I'm so young, I don't know what's going on.
I thought laws in America protect workers and treat people with respect. I thought I would make good money to send home to my family. But I was treated like an animal. Life was really hell in Saipan. I couldn't believe America would let bosses take away my childhood. I should have been in school, not working there naked. I was ashamed. I still have friends there who are suffering like I suffered. I'm not the only one. Many workers are in bad condition. I don't want this to happen to anybody else like happened to me.
When I started my job, I didn't want to take my clothes off. My boss was swearing at me. I was just crying. I took my clothes off and he made me do splits. It really hurt me. He said he would teach me to dance. He wanted me to be a star because I'm younger than everybody. What could I do? I learned how to use cough medicine so I don't know what I'm doing. When I learned how to drink, I'm always drunk and they took advantage of me. They put their fingers inside me but I can't do anything about it. My boss said the customer is always right. One customer bit my nipple so hard that I just slapped him. One time a customer punched me on my bare stomach. They try to push sex on me in front of everybody on stage. The customers at the bar were everybody, like local people. Some customers are crazy. My boss told me to light a cigarette from my mouth and put it in my vagina. He was so mad at me because I would not spread my legs. So many times I burned my legs. The customers would come up and light their cigarettes between my legs. I had to put my mouth on their private parts and sometimes they came inside me. Sometimes my boss told us girls to have sex together so the customers wouldn't get bored. They took videos of me many times on the stage doing "shower shows" and "cigarette shows" for commercials and to put in magazines.
My body hurt. My heart hurt. I cried a lot and I was scared. But I had no choice. I had no money to buy a ticket to go home. What could I do? When my boss said he was sending me to Hong Kong, I was really scared. My friend went there and they made her a prostitute.
Three years later I am still trying to get justice for what happened to me and the other girls. But nothing has changed. What happened to me was against the law. New laws can help other girls. It's too late for me.
I was born in Manila on June 9, 1981. [snip]
In Saipan they taught girls to be prostitutes in Hong Kong. My friend worked at Club Kalesa. They sent her to Hong Kong in 1996 when she was 18. She told me she was in Saipan about three years already. She was 15 when she got to Saipan. In March 1996 my boss told me he was getting papers for me to go to Hong Kong. He told me when my visa arrived and ticket, I would just have to go. There would be no question, I would have to fly out.
In late October I went to the Philippine Consul General and later the Saipan Labor Department to complain. I told them I was only a minor and I came on a tourist visa. I told them I had to dance naked even if my permit was for a waitress. The U.S. Department of Labor filed a civil case for me and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a criminal case. What happened to me was a crime. It is illegal. The Philippine Consul General and Filipino groups helped take me to the United States because my life was in danger. My life was threatened and my family too. People said if I didn't drop the case someone was going to set up my mom like she was a drug dealer, and my dad too.
Today I live in the United States in the foster care program and I am 16.1 have a good job and a home tutor. Many Americans have helped me and I thank them and the U.S. government for giving me a second chance in my life. But the other workers in Saipan won't get this chance. That is why it is important for me to speak for them.
Please change the laws to help the other girls and workers. Please change the laws to make bad bosses go to jail and have a lesson. That is the only way to change the CNMI. Otherwise human beings will still be treated like animals. Young girls like me will still dance naked in bars instead of go to school. They will still learn to be prostitutes. They will have no childhood.
Please give me and the others justice. Everybody is expecting justice from you because we have been waiting too long.
Katrina testified almost ten years ago. There are dozens of Katrina’s on Saipan tonight without justice, without hope and trapped in an underground economy buying and selling young women to supply the global sex trade.
The testimony of Lauri Ogumoro of the CNMI charity Karidat and of Sister Stella of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd make it clear that this type of abuse is still all too common on the CNMI.
A surprisingly good article in the Saipan Tribune, Rights advocates speak up versus immigration woes, CNMI abuses laid out the case of human rights advocates for reform (and the shock of the Pirates of Saipan that the 110th Congress wanted to hear that point of view as they considered legislation to extend US laws to the CNMI):
Unknown to many, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources had invited not only CNMI government and business leaders but also members from local non-government social service and human rights advocacy groups, who spilled the beans on human and sex trafficking cases in the Commonwealth during a hearing Thursday, boosting the argument of a serious lack of an effective immigration system in the CNMI.
Narrating a number of documented cases of human trafficking and labor and immigration abuses in the CNMI before the senate panel were Saipan residents Lauri Ogumoro, social worker at Karidat and manager of Guma Esperanza-House of Hope shelter of battered women, and human rights advocate Sister Stella Mangona of Good Shepherd.
Sitting along with them on the senate panel was a 23-year-old sex trafficking victim in the CNMI, identified as Kayleen Entena from the Philippines. [snip]
Ogumoro, who is originally from Oregon and has lived on Saipan for 25 years, cited that just very recently, as she was leaving for D.C., a Chinese woman who is allegedly a victim of human trafficking, was referred to the House of Hope.Asked by Sen. Daniel Akaka on its prevalence, Ogumoro said Guma Esperance has been serving victims of human trafficking since 2005.
In 2006, it received 30 victims of the alleged crime.
Compared with other U.S. territories, this figure is far way up, with American Samoa recording three last year, Hawaii, two; and Guam, zero, she said.
She cited that the U.S. Department of Justice itself considers the CNMI a hot spot for human trafficking due to its close proximity to many Asian countries and its lax immigration system. [snip]
In her 11-page position paper submitted to the panel, Ogumoro said that the 30 victims last year included only four cases identified by local enforcements. [snip]
She said there is a seeming complacency in the community over this issue.
"When I talk with community members and tell them about human trafficking and what is happening to these young women., the response is much the same, 'of he's been doing that for years, and that's just the way it is.' This complacency among community members would no doubt be different if these young women were women from the Commonwealth being trafficked into China or the Philippines.," she said. [snip]
During the committee hearing, Ogumoro said that while she understands the CNMI's hold on the current system, it has to let go of the status quo if it wants a better society.
She likened the situation to a battered woman who finds it hard to leave her husband.
"We often say to women we counsel: I know you love your husband but you can't continue to stay with him if he is hurting you. The CNMI society is hurting. Change in the system is needed," said Ogumoro. [snip]
Sister Stella Mangona, fondly called Sister Stella in the community, said in her six-page testimony that the temporary nonresident workers program in the CNMI has "effectively created a permanent underclass of disenfranchised persons."
"If you have lived somewhere for 20 years, it really is your home, but these workers have no official status of belonging. They are valued employees with stable employment histories, U.S. citizen children going to public schools, deep roots in the community, but no possibility of adjusting their year-to-year vulnerable, temporary status except by marrying a local person," she said.
There is more to understanding how this system of abuse is allowed to still flourish that should be explored. And this continues despite real efforts to end it by the local Catholic Church and some elements in the local and Federal government. There have been some prosecutions of those who force young women into prostitution. There have also been some prosecution of the many other labor violations and cases of abuse.
Some, but not enough and as long as the old guard, the Pirates of Saipan, are in control of immigration, custom and labor laws—the abuse will continue. It will only end with change. It will only end with reform. It will only end by extending US labor, immigration and custom laws to the CNMI—and that includes the minimum wage.
The powers that be on the CNMI have created an economic system based on exploiting guest workers. They know the gig is up, but they want a slow and gradual transition that allows then to squeeze out just a bit more profit. They want more studies. They want more delays. And the only argument they have in their favor is the fear of change.
It is a very old argument, used over the centuries by those who build exploitation into their profit models. I do not have a lot of sympathy for their crocodile tears. For me, the long-term cost of injustice paid in ruined individual lives is more important than the temporary costs of moving away from a failed and corrupt economic system.
If you know about the abuse on the CNMI, you can not morally allow it to continue.
I know about it. So do you. And so do the Democrats who run the 110th Congress. We need to demand change. I do not want to listen to the testimony of another young woman who was raped and abuse as a guest worker to the CNMI ever again.
I am sick of it. And so is everybody who has been working to end the abuse for years.
Now I know that it is a very complex situation on the CNMI.
Even if we "win" this round and extend US labor, immigration and custom laws to the CNMI and include it in the minimum wage, it is only a starting point.
It is going to take time, creativity, new ideas and money to solve the problems we have helped to create on the CNMI and across the old Trust Territories of the Pacific.
I want those involved in the Abramoff/CNMI scandal to be held accountable. I want justice for the guest workers and the indigenous people harmed by the scandal. I want US labor, immigration and custom laws extended to the CNMI. I want the US minimum wage to apply to the CNMI.
And if all of those things happen, I am aware that we are just starting the real work.
That will not be done until a new economy, firmly rooted in social justice and environmental sustainability, is built on the islands.
I would like so see the CNMI transformed from shorthand for sweatshops and abuse to shorthand for hope and justice. As I told David Cohen of the DOI’s Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) we all want the same thing:
It is my hope that we are ultimately on the same side. It is my hope that we both want justice for the people on the CNMI—both natives and guest workers. I hope we both want a functional sustainable economy that works for the people and the environment. And that we both want the CNMI to be a full part of America living under our laws and with representation in the US Congress.
Tall order. But it can be done...
There is more to report about the CNMI Hearing and I will get to that in later posts.
In the scheme of things the problems of the CNMI are small. I mean, we can’t seem to do the big things like Iraq, New Orleans, the Climate Crisis, the economy, etc., so my quest to call attention to the troubles of this far away place is quixotic. And yet, I hope that we will pay attention. I hope that we will bring a new dawn to the CNMI and a future built on a just and sustainable economy that works for all. I hope a victory here will inspire new victories on the mainland.
There are massive problems and we have a Country to take back and a planet to save (literally, the Climate Crisis is real).
2007 is now. Let’s get to work.
Cheers.