Is Marianas’ Guest Worker Program a Harbinger for Mainland?

by James Parks, May 10, 2007

As the debate over guest worker programs heats up as part of the larger issue of immigration reform, lawmakers might want to get a glimpse of the desperate lives of guest workers in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific.

According to dengre, writing on DailyKos, guest workers in the Marianas have been treated like slaves for decades. And he reports how convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff was instrumental in keeping them that way.

Dengre worked at Co-op America, a national nonprofit dedicated to harnessing economic action, where he learned about the “guest worker” program on the Marianas. When he looked closer at the U.S. guest worker program on the Marianas:

I was appalled. This was very close to modern slavery.

He describes the experiences of Buddhi Lal Dhimal, a Nepalese guest worker on the islands for the past 10 years. According to press reports, Dhimal set himself on fire two weeks ago—the day he had been ordered to come to the U.S. Labor Department on the island to pick up his plane ticket for a forced return to Nepal. 

Dhimal’s story and the stories of thousands of guest workers should be a warning to lawmakers who want to expand guest worker programs without any protections for the workers, dengre argues. For the complete story and to read more about guest workers in the Marianas, click here.

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