LET me offer the following thoughts in response to Tina Sablan’s recent letter on wage and immigration issues:
1. The description of the labor and immigration system as “dysfunctional” is greatly overstated.  That system has certainly created some problems, but has also enabled great economic achievements and the rise of a uniquely diverse and vibrant society.  It seems to me that it is better to fix the problems and keep the benefits than to scrap the whole thing and start over.
2.  We are encouraged to “take responsibility for the crisis we have created.”  It is not clear if this means the economic crisis or the federalization crisis.  If the latter, it was created not by anyone here, but by Congressman Miller, Mr. Stayman, and their reactionary allies in Congress, who have manufactured a sudden and artificial “crisis” out of long-existing differences of opinion.
3.  On the other hand, it is absolutely correct that we must take responsibility for the very real economic crisis, regardless of who created it (and we probably have at least contributed to it).  However, giving away to the federal government the authority necessary to deal with the situation is not taking responsibility, it is abdicating responsibility.
4.  Whether or not local wage and immigration control was originally envisioned as “temporary,” the CNMI people’s right of local self-government as to their internal affairs is a permanent, fundamental provision of the Covenant, and it is explicitly recognized there as a “right,” not a “privilege.”  To the extent that labor and immigration issues, over the last 30 years, have become deeply woven into the fabric of CNMI society, they cannot be considered in isolation from the issue of local self-government.
5.  We are encouraged to “freely embrace a new program.”  But what new program?  There is not even a draft immigration bill on the table.  To favor the federalization of immigration without knowing what it will entail is simply to leap off a cliff in the blind hope that whoever catches us will be better and wiser people than we are.  They won’t be.  They will be human beings just like our own local legislators, equally susceptible to short-sighted policy-making and the influence of special interests, but much farther away, and beyond our power to influence them or remove them from office.  What kind of “new program” is that?
6.  And since when has Congress said anything about the CNMI “freely” embracing anything?  The message from at least Mr. Miller, Mr. Stayman, and their allies has consistently been that if we don’t “embrace” their program, then it will “embrace” us — and that is not so free, is it?  If we are to “freely embrace a new program” with Congress, let them put down the big stick and come to the discussion table disavowing any intention, or any right, to coerce the CNMI people, or to impose any law the people have not consented to.  A fraternal offer of cooperation, rather than an arrogant demand for control, would work wonders in dissolving the current atmosphere of mutual distrust.  Perhaps Mr. Stayman, on behalf of the Senate committee, will endorse such a paradigm shift on his current visit.  I highly doubt it, but nothing would delight me more than to be proven wrong.  Until that happens, however, I do not think the “rhetoric” of “federal takeover,” or of legislation being “shoved down our throats,” is at all misplaced.  On the contrary, it is a perfectly accurate description of what is being attempted.

JED HOREY
As Matuis, Saipan