http://www.pcactionfund.org/delayspocket/di.htmWith all of Tom DeLay's scandals, from lobbyist junkets to blocking legislation for protecting women from exploitation in Saipan, this info could be used to submarine your local congressman.
Below is some reference material on the affects of DeLay's heinous action of blocking legislation for almost 10 years. Legislation that had been proposed in 1996 by Rep George Miller. Saipan is a territory of the United States.
"On arrival in Saipan some workers found that their contracts were worthless. They were told their employer had gone bankrupt. Day laborers who had thought they were going to be security guards piled on top of each other at night in one-room hovels and explored ideas like selling their kidneys to raise enough money to go home. Saipan became a fixture of the booming global sex trade. Young Chinese women recruited for restaurant jobs were ordered to work in karaoke and topless bars where managers told them they had to drink and have sex with customers. They received no pay for this coerced prostitution. The so-called bar fines for their services went to their employers.
http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1743Human rights groups, long up in arms over the work conditions on the islands, charged that sweatshop operators did not appreciate it when their female employees got pregnant. Numerous allegations of forced abortions surfaced over the years.
The protests began to reach the ears of Congress. Rep. George Miller, (D-Ca) and others began to demand that US labor and environmental laws be applied to the Marianas. Tom DeLay and his friend Jack Abramoff swung into action and fashioned a vigorous and largely successful counter-attack.
Denying the reports that workers were being mistreated, Abramoff said the Marianas' unregulated environment was in fact a success story and a model for economic development. He said that efforts to regulate the islands' garment factories by some members of Congress like Miller were nothing less than immoral. "These are immoral laws designed to destroy the economic lives of a people," Abramoff said. He went on to compare the proposed laws with the Nuremberg laws that restricted German Jews under the Nazis.
In 1998, ABC, CNN, the BBC and the New York Times each confirmed reports of forced labor, sex slaves and domestic forced servitude among the Marianas' so-called "guest workers."
http://www.alternet.org/story/13140/At the behest of lobbyist Jack Ambramoff, Tom DeLay has worked to protect special labor laws for Saipan. For years DeLay has “fought against imposing immigration restrictions and the federal minimum wage on Saipan, part of a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean.”
Last month in the Galveston County Daily News, DeLay denied reports that workers were being abused:
“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.
Carmencita Abad, a woman who worked in Saipan for six years, says it’s DeLay who has it wrong. In a telephone interview Abad said:
My answer is, Mr. DeLay, I am that person. I am an example of an individual who can prove that the accounts of sweatshop labor and forced prostitution are not just allegations but true accounts of working conditions in the Marianas Islands when Mr. DeLay traveled there and turned a blind eye to our misery.
http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?m=200506"
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