DeLay disputes charges of abuse in Saipan

15 May 2005 // “Incredible lies” was the way House Majority Leader Tom DeLay described charges that some foreign workers on Saipan labored in sweatshops in the 1990s while others were forced into sex slavery.

DeLay’s vehement denials come despite findings by two federal agencies and by congressmen from both parties that the charges were true.

So why would a social conservative defend the goings-on in the garment factories, restaurants and bars of an island 12,000 miles away from his Texas district, which includes a large portion of Galveston County?

The answer involves ideology, politics and money — and it could play an important role in determining DeLay’s future as the No. 2 man in the House.

In The News Again

DeLay has long fought against imposing immigration restrictions and the federal minimum wage on Saipan, part of a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean.

Since 2001, a new governor and a lawsuit have brought changes to the island’s labor regulations, but in the 1990s, they were the subject of a heated debate in the Congress.

Questions about labor conditions on Saipan have resurfaced in recent weeks as the national press has continued to look into DeLay’s travel and who financed it.

Much of the coverage has focused on Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who is now the target of a federal investigation into allegations that he defrauded Indian tribes pursuing casino licenses.

Over the years, Abramoff has made millions by representing a variety of interests with business before the government. What he sells is his access to powerful politicians such as DeLay and members of the Bush administration.

Abramoff also has employed former DeLay staffers and makes hefty political contributions both to the congressman and to the president.

The Washington Post last month revealed that Abramoff charged parts of a two-week trip DeLay took to Britain in 2000 to his personal credit card.

Then the New York Times last week revealed that Abramoff paid for two of DeLay’s senior aides — along with two Democratic members of Congress — to visit Saipan in 1996 and 1997.

DeLay himself visited the tropical island for the New Year’s holiday in December 1997, but Saipan’s government paid for the trip.

It is a violation of House ethics rules for a registered lobbyist such as Abramoff to pay for congressional travel, but DeLay said that he believed his and his staff’s trips were financed by nonprofit organizations and through other proper means.

“The fact of the matter is that we complied with House rules both in spirit and intent every way that I know how,” DeLay said in an interview with The Daily News.

He added that while the national media have focused on the golf he played in 2000 at St. Andrews in Scotland, they have ignored the real reasons for his travel.

“They have refused to print the fact that I am involved in many, many different international issues, whether it be freedom in Taiwan or Israel or Russia or religious freedom and human rights in China, Southeast Asia and in Russia, and human trafficking and slavery and sexual exploitation in Southeast Asia,” DeLay said.

A New Business

But was DeLay, then the House Republican whip, defending human rights on Saipan?

Abramoff, to whom DeLay once referred as “one of my closest and dearest friends,” was employed from 1996 to 2000 by the government of the Commonweath of the Northern Marianas Islands.

The commonwealth is a U.S. territory. Saipan is its capital.

The territory hired Abramoff to lobby the federal government to fight proposals to impose federal immigration and minimum wage standards.

Abramoff was also hired by the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association, a trade group. The two paid Abramoff’s firm $4.5 million for his representation.

Abramoff billed the territorial government more than $350,000 for travel expenses from scores of visits by congressmen in 1996 and 1997, including DeLay.

Abramoff even billed the Northern Marianas, which was running huge budget deficits, for arranging congressional tee times at Saipan’s best golf courses, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Under its 1986 charter, the territory had been allowed to create its own immigration and minimum wage regulations.

The idea was to help the Marianas economy to develop by exempting it from the federal minimum wage. Allowing the territory to set its own immigration rules was supposed to help protect its cultural identity.

Garment manufacturers, based primarily in China and Korea, found Saipan appealing.

They were allowed to import an unlimited amount of textiles from overseas without paying the duties imposed on mainland garment manufacturers.

The territory’s lax immigration rules allowed the companies to import workers from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia. Its low minimum wage allowed them to pay $3.05 an hour.

Despite using foreign workers and foreign cloth, the manufacturers could sew “Made in the USA” labels into the garments they made on Saipan. Meanwhile, mainland garment manufacturers complained that the lower-cost Saipan operations were driving them out of business.

Manufacturers on Saipan made clothing for The Gap, Liz Claiborne, Banana Republic, Old Navy, J.C. Penney, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie and Fitch, Brooks Brothers and others.

As guest workers flooded Saipan, the territory’s population more than tripled between 1980 and 1995.

DeLay said the special labor and immigration rules allowed by the territory’s 1986 charter were desperately needed.

“The Marianas people were dependent on the federal government, and it destroyed them socially,” DeLay said. “They had huge rates of divorce, illegitimate births, drug use, alcoholism. It was a disaster.

“The people decided to bring free enterprise and capitalism to the Marianas Islands and it all changed. People had jobs, they had dignity, families stayed together. Rates of drug use and alcoholism plummeted.”

Help Or Harm?

However, after George Miller toured the island in 1998, he told a different story. Miller was the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Resources, which has jurisdiction over insular territories such as the Northern Marianas, Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

He said he interviewed workers from China, India, Bangladesh and elsewhere. Almost all told Miller they had paid recruiters in their home countries $2,000 to $7,000 for a chance at one- or two-year labor contracts in Saipan’s garment, restaurant and construction industries.

Some in the garment industry lived in barracks with no running water and a hot plate for a kitchen, Miller reported. For those amenities, they paid their employers $100 a month in rent.

One woman told Miller that when she became pregnant, her employer gave her a choice: return to China or be fired. The woman said she was afraid that if she went back to China, she’d be forced to have a late-term abortion.

Other Chinese women told Miller that the “restaurant” jobs they’d taken consisted of hanging out in karaoke bars, being forced to have sex with the patrons and then being shut out of the proceeds from their prostitution, his report said.

Meanwhile, the tidal wave of immigration brought with it spikes in gang and drug activity, Miller reported.

DeLay said he’d heard the same allegations.

“I wanted to see it for myself because of the kinds of charges (that have been made) — that I found to be totally false, incredible lies about the people of the Marianas Islands,” he said. “These were clean garment factories. They were bringing people from China and paying them in many cases more in one year than they could make in 10 years in China, thereby supporting families back in China.”

The territorial government in the Marianas did a notoriously poor job of tracking how many guest workers were there in the 1990s and where they came from.

Despite an official limit of 11,000 foreign workers in the garment industry, Miller in 1998 estimated that the actual number was closer to 28,000. He placed the overall number of foreign workers in the territory at 42,000 — more than the permanent population.

“Sure, when you get this number of people, there are stories of sexual exploitation,” DeLay said. “But in interviewing these employees one-on-one, there was no evidence of any of that going on. No evidence of sweatshops as portrayed by the national media. It’s a beautiful island with beautiful people who are happy about what’s happening.”

Hard Evidence

But the U.S. Justice Department did find proof of sex slavery.

In 1999, Soon Oh Kwon, president of Kwon Enterprises, and his wife pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to violating federal laws against involuntary servitude.

The two admitted to bringing Chinese women to Saipan in 1996 and 1997 on contracts to work as waitresses. Instead, they were forced to work as “bargirls” at Kwon Enterprises’ karaoke club, K’s Hideaway. The women were forced to have sex with the patrons, Kwon said.

If the Chinese women said they wanted to return home, they were told they could not leave until they repaid their debt for coming to Saipan. In case they had any thoughts of leaving any way, they were told they would be killed if they tried, Kwon said.

The case was one of 10 involuntary servitude cases the Justice Department brought in the Northern Marianas during a three-year period. They involved more than 150 victims, according to a Justice Department statement.

While the Justice Department found hard evidence that people were using Saipan’s immigration rules to make women sex slaves, DeLay never did.

“At the time … we met with people who were making these kinds of allegations, including the Catholic Church, and asked them to show us even one story that was brought up by the George Millers of the world, and they could not produce one story or one individual to prove their allegations,” DeLay said.

“I saw it for what it was: The left wanting to impose federal bureaucracy on the economy of the Marianas Islands and shut down what was going on there. They will say and do anything.”

A Big Operator

It was at a New Year’s Eve dinner on Saipan in December 1997 that DeLay declared Abramoff, the lobbyist fighting to protect the status quo there, “one of my closest and dearest friends.” The dinner was attended by Willie Tan, the owner of many of the island’s garment factories, according to an ABC News report.

In 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor filed suit against five of Tan’s factories.

It said that employees were forced to work 84 hours a week with no overtime and below the territory’s then-minimum wage of $2.90 an hour.

The suit also said that many of Tan’s employees were not allowed to leave their work sites or the barracks where they lived.

Tan ended up paying $9 million in restitution to 1,200 employees. Up to that time, it was the largest fine ever imposed by the Labor Department.

But DeLay downplayed the matter.

“Certainly, when you look at a big operation like Willie Tan has, you can find anything,” DeLay said. “But in general, what was going on there was legitimate and straightforward.”

DeLay said the move in the 1990s to federalize immigration and minimum wage rules for Saipan was motivated more by the Democrats’ political agenda than out of a desire to safeguard human rights.

“The issue was (former President) Clinton and leftist George Miller … were trying to destroy what was going on in the Marianas Islands,” he said.

But the Democrats were not alone in their outrage over the goings-on on Saipan.

Frank Murkowski is now the Republican governor of Alaska. But in the late 1990s, he was chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which, like Miller’s House committee, has jurisdiction over Saipan.

After his visits, Murkowski called the conditions faced by workers there “appalling.” In 2000, he marshaled an immigration-reform bill through his committee and through the Senate.

However, in the face of DeLay’s opposition, it died in the House.