Compare to Bangladesh, Vietnam, or the Phillipines. Low-wage American workers are not very competitive in a global marketplace. If the cost of shipping and importing goods and services < the cost of complying with U.S. regulations and paying American workers, there's every economic reason to have the work sent out to less regulated, lower-paid regimes.

The way to fix this is to even the playing field by ensuring that it's not cheaper to pay to have this done overseas. Otherwise, the "American-made" companies just have to hope that's enough to convince customers to help them make up the gap in profits ... and it's usually not.

Both part time and low paid workers are protected by the same labor laws as full time workers in the U.S.

Maybe I am not understanding, can you say what rights are you speaking of specifically?

They would have more protections and rights than an "offshore" employee would have I imagine.

The minimum wage itself is a barrier here, along with overtime regulations and a host of other things designed to prevent employer abuse.