IN his column last Wednesday, Jeffrey Turbitt criticized what he perceives as an inconsistency in the anti-federalization position — namely, that opponents of federalization can’t make up their minds whether they think that the proposed new class of resident aliens will all leave the CNMI, or that they will all stay.
In fact, of course, nobody really knows what they will do.  Logic certainly suggests that, if people have the opportunity to seek greener pastures elsewhere, they will do it.  History, on the other hand, suggests the opposite: on Guam and Hawaii, they stayed, and ultimately became citizens.  So who knows what they will do here?  Certainly not me.  Debating such questions is really just pointless speculation.
More importantly, it overlooks the forest for the trees.  The problem, when you step back a few paces, is not either that they will leave or that they will stay, but that, whatever they do, the CNMI will simply be stuck with it — and that is itself only the most immediately obvious manifestation of the real underlying problem with the proposed federalization plan: namely, that it will leave the CNMI people unable, for the indefinite future, to make any decisions at all regarding the admission of aliens for any purpose — whether as workers, tourists, students, immediate relatives, or in any other capacity.  All such decisions will be made solely by federal legislators and bureaucrats.  Given the fact that every possible scenario for the future economic and social development of the CNMI somehow involves aliens (whether letting them in, in some capacity or another, or keeping them out), this means that almost total control over the CNMI’s future will have passed, apparently permanently, into federal hands.
That is why federalization is, and should be, opposed — not because anyone thinks they have “a God-given right to cheap labor,” but because it permanently takes the future economic and social destiny of the CNMI out of the hands of the CNMI people where it properly belongs.
The more puzzling question is not why the opponents of federalization oppose it, but why its supporters support it.  I suppose most of them would answer, “because we need reform,” but there is no reform that the federal government can impose that cannot also be effected by the local government of the CNMI.  Of course, the pro-federalizers do not believe that the local government will enact the reforms they support, but the point is that it can, and if it won’t, the proper response is to put people in office who will.  Vote your convictions, and encourage others to do the same.  That is the democratic response.  But the pro-federalizers do not believe in democracy.  They do not trust the persuasive force of their own ideas to sway the population.  Instead, they seek to short-circuit the democratic process and have the particular policy solutions they favor be imposed from outside — a particularly short-sighted approach, since it ultimately means taking the power of any future further reform out of their own hands as CNMI citizens.  
My advice to those who seek reform, of whatever kind, is to work vigorously to put people in office, right here in the local CNMI government, who will enact it.  If that doesn’t happen right away, work harder.  If you are in the right, sooner or later you will prevail, or at least reach some kind of middle ground that accommodates the legitimate concerns of everyone involved.  But once you take the lazy way out, and call for the federal government, which is not answerable or responsible to any of us (including you, and including the alien workers), to enforce its own policy choices by fiat for the indefinite future, you forfeit all moral authority, and stand to subject all of us, yourself included, to a long-term cost that will far outweigh any short-term gain.  

JED HOREY
As Matuis, Saipan