WASHINGTON By Dennis Sadowski Catholic News Service May 13, 2008 - An advocate for the workers told Catholic News Service that with the protections immigrants from China and other Asian countries will be less likely to become victims of fraud when they are recruited to work in the U.S. commonwealth, which is a group of 15 small islands about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to the Philippines just north of Guam. Good Shepherd Sister Carol McClenon, interim national coordinator of the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, said a provision of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act will reduce the likelihood that workers will end up in prostitution or in other abusive work situations. Sister Carol, who returned to the U.S. last summer after working for four years at a domestic violence shelter in the commonwealth run by Karidat, the local equivalent of Catholic Charities, said the difficulty stemmed from unscrupulous employers who recruit workers for one type of work only to force them into another setting. Most commonly, she said, people are recruited for factory work in the once flourishing garment industry or as members of the wait staff in restaurants and then forced into prostitution or potentially abusive settings as domestic workers. The commonwealth has one of the lowest male-to-female ratios in the world, with about 76 men for every 100 women. About 70,000 people live on the islands, according to U.S. census figures, with more than half being non-native workers, most from Asia.

The law's provisions will not be fully in place until Dec. 31, 2017, but Sister Carol said the law allows victims of trafficking who are not U.S. citizens to become eligible for a special visa and other benefits and services that refugees receive. "I don't believe federalization will stop the problem, but I do believe it will significantly cut down on efforts to deliberately swoosh people in," she said.