Like Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas were subject to some U.S. laws but not others. The federal minimum wage and much of immigration law were waived. The nearest Occupational Safety and Health Administration office was thousands of miles away. At the same time, for the purposes of trade, the Northern Marianas counted as part of the country. The combination was potent: a legal environment where foreign workers could toil for paltry wages with little oversight to stitch garments labeled MADE IN THE USA.

Saipan functioned as a sort of standing loophole. Starting in 1995, as stories of its exploited workers made their way to the mainland, members of Congress sought to close it. Over the next decade or so, they would submit at least twenty-nine bills to change some part of the relevant law. Twice the Senate voted unanimously for wage and immigration reforms, only to have the bills die in the House Committee on Resources. A 1999 House bill had 243 cosponsors, a substantial majority. But it, too, died.

The Northern Marianas government and the garment manufacturers, it turned out, had hired a lobbyist to defend their lucrative arrangement. A really, really good lobbyist. He offered junkets to every Congress member and congressional aide who wanted to visit Saipan—more than 150 went. The visitors enjoyed golfing, luxurious hotels, snorkeling, and, in some cases, the services of prostitutes (some of the guest workers on Saipan were driven by poverty into sex work, others were forced into it outright).