SAIPAN (AP) – Despite heavy rain, thousands of foreign workers, mostly from the Philippines, marched through Saipan’s tourist and business district, protesting local laws they say give them no protection amid the demise of the once thriving garment industry.
The workers rallied Friday in support of a bill in the US Congress to federalize the island’s immigration system. They say that would allow those already legally employed to retain non-immigrant work and study status in other US territories and states. Under current commonwealth law, they have no status outside the Northern Mariana Islands.
Demonstrators carrying signs declaring “Justice for All” also included workers from China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Canada.
“We’ve had rallies before but never a march of this magnitude,” said Wendy Doromal, a Florida-based teacher and human rights activist who flew to Saipan for the rally. Police estimated the demonstrators at several thousand.
Doromal said Congress should help the migrant workers who earn the islands’ hourly minimum wage of $3.55.
Several of Saipan’s garment factories have closed in recent years, and workers have been forced to return to their homelands. New local immigration laws prevent them from switching employers and require alien workers to leave for six months every three years.
Many of the 20,000 migrant workers on the island have established families in Saipan, with their children being US citizens because they were born here. If local laws are enforced, many of them would have to take their families off the island with little hope of being able to return, protesters said.
Victoria Tanesa, a mother from Laguna, said she has been in Saipan for seven years and wants to stay because there are even fewer job opportunities in her country.
“I like it here because I have no job in the Philippines,” said Tanesa, who works as a commercial cleaner.
Legislation in the US House would apply federal immigration and labor rules to the commonwealth, which in the past three decades of local control has been tainted with charges of sweatshop and human trafficking abuses, especially in the once-thriving garment industry.
Commonwealth Gov. Benigno Fitial opposes the measure, saying it ignores recent improvements in labor standards and could cripple attempts to revive the islands’ depressed economy.
Officials in Guam and Hawaii also are concerned that federalizing the Northern Marianas’ immigration system would open the way for workers to migrate and burden the economies of other US territories and states.
Over the past decade, US lawmakers have introduced several dozen bills addressing the Northern Marianas’ immigration and labor practices and its right to use “Made in the USA” labels on garments made by poorly paid, poorly treated Chinese, Filipino and other Asian workers.
The Northern Marianas economy is faltering, with the garment industry reduced from a $1-billion enterprise in 1999 to a few struggling factories, because China entered the World Trade Organization and can now sell its clothes at lower prices in the US.
Tourism also is down and government revenues have declined by a third over the past decade.
The Northern Marianas, once under Spanish rule, went from Japanese to US control after World War II.