Ever since the series of damaging stories about Colorado's Bob Schaffer and his relationship with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff broke, one thing has always remained mysterious to many observers: where did Schaffer get the idea to praise immigration and labor policy in the Northern Marianas as a "model" for the rest of the nation? Remember, Schaffer has had to defend himself against very uncomfortable questions about the CNMI ever since reporters started checking details following his bringing them up in a non-controversial inqterview. And naturally, he's been much more careful since that time to clarify all the things he supposedly wasn't supporting: the labor camp living conditions, the forced abortions on workers who violate strict company policy against hooking up, the virtual indentured servitude resulting from vast sums of money demanded by "private sector" human smugglers, etc. You know, all the bad parts of his "model."

Still, where the hell did he get the idea that this was a great system for the rest of the country? Well, our intrepid friends at Talking Points Memo have a theory. Actually, it's a little more than a theory:

Schaffer Echoed DeLay on Mariana Immigration

Speaking to a talk radio host earlier this week, Schaffer said that he hadn't said that "I endorse everything that goes on in the [Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands]" -- meaning forced abortions, and other human rights abuses. He'd meant "a very narrow aspect of the CNMI's, of the commonwealth's, immigration process, and that was a pre-process of qualifying foreign labor in their home country before they're given entry visas to set foot on American soil."

And that's true, sort of. In his original comments to The Denver Post, Schaffer had been asked about guest-worker programs. And as a successful model for the U.S., he'd pointed to the Marianas, saying "prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private- sector management" works "very well" there.

It was a comment that mirrored those of ex-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Jack Abramoff's staunchest ally in Congress, ten years before. From The Houston Chronicle in 1998:

Rather than impose more regulation on the [Marianas], DeLay said, the United States ought to adopt the islands' business and labor practices by creating a guestworker program of its own 'where particular companies can bring Mexican workers in' to fill jobs that Americans won't take. DeLay said the workers could be paid at 'whatever wage the market will bear.'

DeLay had just returned from a tour of the Marianas, where he'd rung in the New Year. Abramoff, of course, had organized the trip, and his clients, the Marianas government and garment manufacturers there, had paid for it. In an interview with the Chronicle, "Delay said he saw nothing wrong with accepting the trip, and said Abramoff, who went on the trip as well, was just 'doing his job (as a lobbyist).'" DeLay remains under federal investigation for his ties to Abramoff.

Beyond the free trips, the Marianas' reliance on private sector management had a clear philosophical appeal to conservatives which Abramoff was keen to exploit. But doing so meant ignoring a host of evidence and findings that the Marianas' guest worker system was at the heart of the abuses there.

A report by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1997, for instance, did not find that the system was working "very well" there.

"Based on our observations... we believe that the CNMI's system of immigration adjudication is not only grossly inadequate but, in many respects, particularly in the area of visa issuance, non-existent," the report said. The system, the report said, had resulted in "serious abuses." (You can read an excerpt from that report here.)

A subsequent report by the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform was even harsher. Judging that "[l]arge-scale 'temporary' guestworker programs present inherent problems for liberal democracies," the report stated that the "foreign contract workers are easily exploited." No other country in the world had policies like the islands, the report found. When Michael Teitelbaum, a Republican appointee and one of the two commissioners who'd authored the report, testified to Congress about their findings, he said that the islands' system was a "diplomatic embarrassment to the United States." (You can read an excerpt from that report here.)

Both reports recommended that the islands' system be overhauled and gradually shifted to one conforming with U.S. immigration. It was a result that Abramoff was hired to fight, since the garment manufacturers there relied on the easily-exploitable foreign workers (the guest worker population actually outnumbered the U.S. citizens on the islands). House Republicans, particularly DeLay and Rep. Don Young (R-AK), successfully blocked such reform for years, but Congress finally followed that recommendation earlier this month.

Of course, none of this was or is unknown to Schaffer. In 1999, for instance, at the same House resources committee hearing where Teitelbaum testified, Schaffer had the opportunity to question a Bangladeshi who said that he'd been the victim of human traffickers. But rather than asking the man about his experience, Schaffer chose to interrogate him about whether he'd been paid by Interior officials to protest the working conditions there. Maybe if he hadn't stuck to Abramoff's playbook, he would have learned something.

It seems to me that there are two possibilities as far as Bob Schaffer is concerned. His dogmatic commitment to "free-market" privatize-everything ideology became a serious vulnerability to exploitation by unprincipled figures like Abramoff. It's clear from Schaffer's comments and testimony at the time that nothing could convince him the federal government had any role in reforming immigration and labor abuses in the Northern Marianas, even though the federal government was the only authority that could. We know that is true because Abramoff was paid by the local government to stall these reforms.

With all the facts in view, there's no real question about it: Schaffer either was complicit in the abuses that occured in the CNMI as a product of his extreme ideology, or negligently ignorant of them for the same ideological reasons. Either way, it respresents nothing short of an abdication of his responsibility as a federal elected official to approach the situation the way he did: his Potemkin tour of the islands, followed by his pronouncement of no problems in the CNMI that the federal government had "any business" intervening in, and his wilful attack on federal officials--and even victimized laborers themselves--who dared to tell him differently.

The story this tells is of a public official whose approach to his job was callow and self-defeating at the very least. And at worst? A willing defender of shameful human rights violations on behalf of those who profit from them? And the question lurking just beneath that one--was it just ideology motivating him, or are there more pages from Tom DeLay's corrupt script to be disclosed?

See also:

"Colorado Right to Life" blasts Schaffer for ignoring forced abortions in Marianas
Hey! Look over there!
Down the rabbit hole with Bob Schaffer
TPM updates Schaffer/Abramoff
Brief summary: Schaffer/Abramoff so far
Schaffer / Abramoff strategies meshed
Bob Schaffer hides from Abramoff/Marianas questions
Damaging Schaffer/Abramoff disclosures continue
Schaffer/Marianas scandal explodes
Marianas questions dog Bob Schaffer