Micronesia's chief legal officer says a plan to regulate "body brokers," who collect fees of up to $5,500 for each worker they deliver to American nursing homes, is expected to be submitted to the Pacific island nation's legislature when it convenes Jan. 6 for a special five-day session.

Paul McIlrath, the justice secretary, said he would actively lobby for passage of the bill in the session. Under the proposed law, the Micronesian government would be authorized to issue regulations requiring recruiters to register with the government before signing up residents for jobs in the United States or other countries.

McIlrath said a similar proposal had been submitted to the Congress in the fall, but the session ended before the measure could be brought up for a vote.

"It got bogged down with the proofreaders," he said.

In September, The Sun and and the Orlando Sentinel reported that hundreds of residents of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, both former U.S. trust territories, have been imported for low-paying jobs, with many ending up stranded after recruiters renege on promises of return air fare. Under the provisions of a 16-year-old international agreement called the Compact of Free Association, island residents can come and work in the United States without obtaining visas.

The recruits are often required to sign contracts that commit them to staying in those jobs for one to two years. Those who break the contracts face lawsuits for thousands of dollars in damages.

No specific laws in Micronesia or the Marshall Islands regulate the recruiters. Many of the recruits complain that they were not fully informed about job assignments in the United States. Many, who believed they would be studying to become nurses, ended up emptying bedpans.

McIlrath said that he has begun drafting regulations to be put in place if the new statute is approved. He said those rules were being modeled after a proposal prepared by the U.S. Labor Department.

Registering recruiters

Under the Labor Department draft, recruiters would be required to register with the island government and disclose the details of any labor contracts. The information would be shared with U.S. officials.

The Labor Department proposal would also ban use of promissory notes to, in effect, indenture recruits to the low-paying jobs for an extended period.

While a new law seems likely to be adopted in Micronesia, officials of the Marshall Islands say they are not convinced that a similar law is necessary in their country.

In a statement released through the Republic of the Marshall Islands Embassy in Washington, officials said that they were sharing information gathered about the recruitment of their citizens with U.S. officials and that they had requested technical assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor to strengthen the labor and recruitment rules "to ensure that legal safeguards are in place in the RMI to protect the interests of its citizens."

However, Howard Hills, an American attorney who represents the Marshall Islands government, said it was not at all clear that new laws were needed. He said there had been adequate notice to Marshallese citizens by the government and through newspaper reports of the potential pitfalls of signing on with international recruiters.

He said Marshall Islands officials continue to strongly oppose any effort to link recruitment reforms with the nearly completed negotiations on certain provisions of the Compact of Free Association.

Those negotiations between the United States and the Marshall Islands and Micronesia are nearly completed, and Hills said he expected a package to be submitted to Congress within the next few months.

Negotiations with U.S.

"The negotiations are going very well," said Hills. But he also said that some U.S. officials have attempted to hold the negotiations hostage to force the Marshall Islands government to adopt "a bunch of overblown and hypertechnical provisions" to regulate recruiters.

Under the proposed agreement, the U.S. government is expected to provide nearly $3 billion in aid to the two countries over the next 20 years.

"The public in the RMI has been forewarned that you can end up getting stranded," Hills said. "The RMI does not want its people to be exploited and abused."

Hills said the government "views it [recruitment] as an important problem, but the numbers are fairly small. It's a manageable problem. This can and is being addressed."