U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) took the Senate floor today to speak in support of S. 1052, the Northern Mariana Islands Covenant Implementation Act. Senator Akaka and Senator Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, are sponsors of S. 1052, which would impose U.S. immigration law on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Senator Akaka's opening statement follows:
Mr. President, as we begin today's debate, I want to express my sincere thanks to the leadership of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for their commitment to CNMI immigration reform. The Senator from Alaska, Chairman Murkowski, and the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, understand that a great injustice is taking place far from the Nation's Capitol. That is why they have brought this legislation to the Senate floor. Their efforts prove that they live by the words of one of our Senate titans, Daniel Webster, who proclaimed justice the "great interest of man on earth."
Perhaps some Senators, and many viewers who are watching these proceedings in the gallery or on television, are wondering, "Why is the United States Senate – that great deliberative body in the world's strongest democracy – taking time from its busy schedule to debate legislation that affects a distant island community with a population of only 70,000 people?" You might ask, "Why don't we work on other important legislation, such as nuclear waste policy, judicial nominations, or health care for our armed forces?"
The answer to these questions is that conditions in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas are an affront to democratic values. The answer is that the CNMI immigration system has sparked international protests from our Pacific allies. Immigration in the Commonwealth violates fundamental standards of morality and human decency. That's why we must pass the reform measure pending in the Senate today.
Chairman Murkowski is a longstanding champion of CNMI immigration reform. He is one of the few members of the Senate in recent memory to visit the Commonwealth, where he witnessed the profound problems caused by their local immigration law.
I doubt that many of my colleagues know very much about the CNMI, a U.S. Island territory located 1,500 miles south of Tokyo. Those Senators who are familiar with the territory have probably read the growing number of articles on the immigration and labor abuse in the Commonwealth. Yet only Chairman Murkowski has visited the islands to get a first-hand understanding of their problems. I joined him on his tour of the CNMI.
The legislation before us won't correct all of the Commonwealth's problems, but it will address the most significant concern, immigration abuse. Chairman Murkowski is a man of the Pacific who understands the need to have an immigration policy that reflects America values. The states we represent, Alaska and Hawaii, are closest to our Pacific neighbors, and we recognize the need to respond to problems that generate strong protests from other Pacific nations. I am honored to join him as a cosponsor of S. 1052, legislation to reform immigration abuses in the CNMI.
When the CNMI became a U.S. commonwealth in 1976, Congress granted it local control over immigration at the request of island leaders. This means that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not apply in the CNMI. We now know that this decision was a great mistake.
Using its immigration authority, the Commonwealth has created a plantation economy that relies upon wholesale importation of low-paid, short-term indentured workers. Indentured servitude, a practice outlawed in the United States over 100 years ago, has resurfaced in the CNMI. Foreign workers pay up to $7,000 to employers or middlemen for the right to a job in the CNMI. When they finally reach the Commonwealth, they are assigned to tedious, low paying work for long hours with little or no time off. At night they are locked in prison-like barracks. If they complain, they are subject to immediate deportation at the whim of their employer.
Some arrive in the islands only to find that they were victims of an employment scam. There are no jobs waiting for them, and no way to work off their bondage debt.
Concern about the CNMI's longstanding immigration problems has historically been bipartisan. In fact, officials in the Reagan Administration first sounded the alarm about the run-away immigration policies that the Commonwealth adopted. The Administration of every President in the past 16 years – the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administration – has consistently criticized the Commonwealth's immigration policy.
Bipartisan studies have also condemned CNMI Immigration. The Commission on Immigration Reform called the CNMI system of immigration and indentured labor "antithetical to American values." According to the Commission, no democratic society has an immigration policy like the CNMI. The closest equivalent is Kuwait, where foreign workers constitute a majority of the workforce and suffer harsh and discriminatory treatment by the citizen population.
For this reason, the CNMI has also become an international embarrassment for the United States. We have received complaints from the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh about immigration abuse and the treatment of workers. The failure of the Commonwealth to reform its immigration system has seriously tarnished our image in the region.
Concerns about the CNMI are not new. Perhaps we should be criticized for not acting sooner. Yet, despite a 14-year effort by the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administrations to persuade the CNMI to correct immigration problems, the problem persists. After 14 years of waiting for the Commonwealth to implement reform, it is time for Congress to act. Statistics on Commonwealth immigration provide compelling evidence of the need for reform.
Twenty years ago, the CNMI had a population of 15,000 citizens and 2,000 alien workers. Today, the citizen population stands at 28,000, but the alien worker population has mushroomed to 42,000. That's a 2,000 percent increase.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that the CNMI has no reliable records of aliens entering the Commonwealth, how long they remain, and when, if ever, they depart. One CNMI official testified that they have "no effective control" over immigration in their islands.
The CNMI shares the American flag, but it does not share our immigration system. When the Commonwealth became a territory of the United States, we allowed them to write their own immigration laws. After twenty years of experience, we know that the CNMI immigration experiment has failed.
Conditions in the CNMI prompt the question whether the United States should operate a unified system of immigration, or whether a U.S. territory should be allowed to establish laws in conflict with national immigration policy.
Common sense tells us that a unified system is the only answer. If Puerto Rico, or Hawaii, or Arizona, or Oklahoma could write their own immigration laws -- and give work visas to foreigners – our national immigration system would be in chaos.
America is one country. We need a uniform immigration system, not one system for the 50 states and another system for one of our territories.
I don't represent the CNMI, but the Commonwealth is in Hawaii's backyard. I speak as a friend and neighbor when I say that this policy cannot continue. The CNMI system of indentured immigrant labor is morally wrong, and violates basic democratic principles.
For example, S. 1052 has nothing to do with "Made in America" labeling, minimum wage reform, or duty-free garments manufactured in the CNMI. These are serious concerns that are addressed in legislation pending before the Finance and HELP Committees. Our bill only corrects the underlying problem of immigration abuse in the Commonwealth.
Despite what you may have read in the newspapers in recent weeks, today's debate has nothing to do with over-zealous Federal employees, subpoenas, contempt citations, or violations of the Hatch Act. The bill before us speaks to the simple proposition that America is one country and we must have a single, uniform immigration policy.
In past hearings on the CNMI, the Federal government was placed on trial. Federal agencies were criticized for their enforcement of labor and civil rights laws. Some of that criticism may be well-founded, but none of it relates to the subject in S. 1052. Our bill is about one thing — immigration — and nothing else.
Like planets circling the sun, there are many, many issues orbiting the core problem of immigration abuse in the Commonwealth. Most of these are extraneous issues that have little, if anything, to do with the immigration measure we are considering today.
Our bill is about one thing — immigration — and nothing else.
