The shame of it all!

Well, 20/20 has done it again. The ABC television news show has released yet another damning report on the CNMI. This time the piece was dubbed “The Shame of Saipan,” and it focused on an alleged undercover “investigation” on the CNMI sex trade. Here again, the same old charge has been repeated, with the same old evidence reintroduced as compelling documentation.

The charge: Poor, unsuspecting Asian women are being sexually exploited on Saipan, all because of “a legal loophole”: local control of labor and immigration.

The evidence: The old Katrina case, in which an underage Filipina was discovered at a local strip-joint. That, plus 20/20 undercover investigator Brian Ross’ “completely unbiased” testimony, which goes largely unsubstantiated.

Here is that 20/20 transcript, along with some of my comments.

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS: Well, now Brian Ross has gone back to Saipan for a new investigation into charges that things have gotten even worse. This time, he has found evidence that some young women are being lured into Saipan’s thriving sex trade and forced into onstage sex acts and prostitution. As you watch our investigation, you may ask yourself, “Could something like this really be happening on American soil?”

Comment: Gee, it happens in the states everyday. “Onstage sex acts?” Where? I didn’t even know about that. I wonder if Mr. Gibson knows that the CNMI doesn’t even have good, old-fashioned American couch or table dances?

BRIAN ROSS, ABCNEWS (VO) These are undercover pictures made by the human rights group Global Survival Network of a business proposition on the American island of Saipan.

ASIAN WOMAN One hour—one hour, $60.

Comment: Wait a minute, I thought ABC’s Charles Gibson just said that it was a “thriving sex trade.” $60 an hour hardly sounds thriving to me. With this wretched economy of ours, I bet I could bring her down to about $50. Damn! And all of this time they’ve been charging me over a $100! I demand a refund!

BRIAN ROSS (VO) Sixty dollars for an hour of massage with one of the thousands of young women from across Asia who, under a loophole in American immigration law, have been legally brought to work on American soil, Saipan.

STEVE GALSTER We’re not talking about prostitution here.We’re talking about forced prostitution.

Comment: Will someone please call David Wiseman? True, some Asian women are working as prostitutes. But this is illegal and still goes on virtually everywhere, including the United States. Besides the assertions of a few highly active special interest groups bent on destroying our local garment industry, no evidence exists to prove that CNMI-based Asian women are routinely being forced into prostitution. Gee, and here I thought that they really liked me. I had no idea they were being forced!

REP GEORGE MILLER, (D) CALIFORNIA These people are working under the protection of the American flag, and they’re being exploited as if they were in the worst Third World country [which is exactly what we will be if federalization ever takes place].

Comment: Notice how everything, no matter how irrelevant, is always brought back to the garment industry, or to critics of the garment industry. Remember the Bangladeshi security guard fiasco, which left about a hundred stranded Bangladeshis? The garment industry was tied in to that unfortunate episode as well–just as prostitution is today, even though there is no direct connection. It seems that everything bad has to be somehow linked to the garment industry. When in doubt, blame the garment industry.

BRIAN ROSS (VO) It’s part of a system that was set up on Saipan primarily to provide thousands of foreign workers for the island’s notorious garment factories. Truckloads of young women from China and the Philippines, who have actually paid thousands of dollars—-an entire family’s life savings—-for what they are told will be good jobs in America.

Comment: See! KATRINA (through translator) Once there was a customer that bit my breast. But the boss told us the customer is always right. Comment: The Liberal media policy is to make a blanket assertion based on a few incidents–or even on a single dramatic incident, no matter how isolated, atypical, or unrepresentative.
If it happens once, they feel fully justified in asserting “many.”

BRIAN ROSS (VO) Many of the women who work here are only teenagers. Many under age, like Katrina, not her real name, who was 14 when she was recruited from the Philippines.

Oh, the shame of it all!

Strictly a personal view. Charles Reyes Jr. is a regular columnist of Saipan Tribune. Mr. Reyes may be reached at charlesraves@hotmail.com