I. Hyeon Su v. M/V Southern Aster

EUGENE A. WRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge.

These consolidated cases test the bounds of the Seamen’s Wage Act, 46 U.S.C. § 10313 (1988). The Wage Act protects seafarers from the efforts of unscrupulous shipowners to take advantage of their superior economic position to withhold payment of promised wages. Each case requires us to resolve this question: Do the Wage Act’s protections extend to foreign crews discharged from foreign ships in foreign ports? Although Congress likely could have extended the Wage Act this far, we conclude that it did not. The structure, history and, more important, the…