AT a luncheon meeting I had with several CNMI residents on Wednesday, Jan, 10, we were discussing what the people of the commonwealth could do to assist in improving the quality of life in the CNMI. The impetus for our meeting is the deteriorating economy of the CNMI and the apparent inability of our political and business leaders to turn things around. To make matters worse, the U.S. Congress is now proposing federal legislation that would take away two of the essential economic tools provided the CNMI under the Covenant: local control of minimum wage and immigration. Such legislation, if enacted, would very definitely aggravate the dying economy of the CNMI and could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. We decided to focus our discussion on what we the people could do locally to improve things.
We discussed what the people of the CNMI could do to help turn things around. The basic question we asked ourselves is: What could any member of the public do to force changes in the way things are done in the CNMI? How could our lawmakers and policymakers listen to the people and implement changes that would further the public good, rather than furthering the interest of a few groups who are influential with respect to legislations that are enacted? Only through public pressure and a strong unified voice could the people force changes in policymaking and in what laws are enacted. Some of the changes that must be undertaken are basic and fundamental changes to the way we have been doing things in the CNMI for some time now. Some of these changes require us to take a long and hard look at our present situation and the way we have been doing things for a long time now, and then determine what we want to achieve for the CNMI in the long run. What are the overarching goals and objectives that the people of the CNMI want to have and to achieve?
Clearly, a good quality of life comes first. And what do we mean by having a good quality of life in the CNMI? Well, first of all, we must have economic self-sufficiency. I believe that is a must. And in order to achieve this, we need to have a sustainable economy to provide gainful employment for the people of the CNMI and to generate the revenue needed by the CNMI government to provide essential public services like public safety, public health and public education. Without a healthy economy, the local government, as we have recently found out, cannot furnish such needed public services.
So the economy must be nurtured and nourished, not stifled and left to grow on its own. As we all know, a fruit-bearing plant that is not cultivated and left on its own either dies, grows crooked, bears fruit that are small and inedible, and are not dependable for the owner’s livelihood.
Tourism is one of our two basic industries. The other is the garment industry. Because of the changes in international agreements and laws governing the movement of textile products worldwide, the CNMI garment industry cannot now effectively compete with other places like China and Vietnam. It is an industry that we know for several years now would eventually leave the CNMI. And based on what we have seen over the past two years, this is exactly what is happening: the industry is leaving. So we are now left with only one industry: tourism. And the CNMI, like a bicycle with two wheels, now has only one wheel and that one wheel is flat: it needs to be patched and filled up with air. But even if this wheel is fixed, the bicycle still cannot function by itself, unless another good wheel is acquired. We, therefore, need to find this second wheel immediately so we could begin moving again.
There are several possible wheels that we should look into immediately. The first is foreign investment, simply because the CNMI doesn’t have the money or resources to do things on its own, like manufacturing or providing services like technological, financial, banking or similar services that other places like Singapore, Hong Kong, India and China are doing for sometime now. What the CNMI has, however, is stability under the U.S. flag, a great climate, a beautiful environment, a rich history, a friendly people, a warm weather year-round, and so forth. We also have the unique ability under the Covenant to provide major tax incentives to both foreign and domestic investors. Sp let’s use the resources that we have to entice investors to come and set up shop here. After all, the world has become one global economy.
One major hang-up that we have at present with respect to enticing foreign investors from investing in the CNMI is our land alienation restriction. Quality investors nowadays are too smart and too savvy to invest in a place where the rate of return is not as competitive as other places. Guam next door, for instance, allows for fee simple ownership of land by foreigners. In order to compete with other places in our region, like Guam, our land alienation laws needs to be re-examined and re-assessed. The CNMI economy has a restriction that makes business investors pause, and then turn away. Why? Because to all investors land is simply a commodity, to be bought and sold just like any other commodity: a car, jewelry, or any other merchandise. He wants to not only recoup his investment, but recoup it in a way that when he resells his investment it is at a price that has appreciated in value, not at for a price that has depreciated over the years, because his leasehold now has only 10 or 15 years remaining.
To a person who is from the CNMI where land ownership is viewed not simply as a commodity but also as a cultural anchor, this view of land ownership as a market commodity can be a very difficult thing to accept. For some, culture must be preserved at all costs. For others, change and transition are inevitable. But even culture, over time, has to adapt to the changes going on around us. So between these two views, the people of the CNMI needs to re-examine before or after 2011, whether the CNMI land alienation restriction should continue, be amended or be repealed. In the balance hangs the critical issue of economic development for the CNMI, for it is extremely difficult to have a free market economy to thrive when the CNMI still has a restriction on land ownership. The Covenant appear to have intended that after 25 years of experience in regulating land ownership in the CNMI, the people of the CNMI would have by that time acquired the experience and degree of sophistication that they need in understanding the importance of land ownership, such that they do not need any law to tell them what to do with their land, or for the government to fear that, unless regulated, the people would squander their land and find themselves landless.
We are arriving at the end of this 25-year sojourn in regulating the ownership of land and we now have to decide whether the land ownership restriction should be removed, and allow the individual land owner to decide for himself (as it should be the case), what he wants to do with his property. What you do with something that you personally own is a uniquely individual thing that no government, at any rate, should tell the individual what to do. This is the basic rationale behind the concept embodied by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution: the right of an individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty entails the right to own property and to dispose of it as you see fit. So the people of the CNMI has its work cut-out with respect to this basic economic issue, for at stake is one of the key wheels that the CNMI must utilize in order to turn around its economy.
The second critical matter that the people of the CNMI must pursue is an informed and educated citizenry. Our most important resource is our people and the people must be accorded the opportunity to acquire a reasonably good education, as well a be given the opportunity to be trained and have the skills needed to be gainfully employed here in the CNMI. We have fallen very short in this endeavor over the past two decades, and the best example of this is when we see over fifty percent of our young people graduate from high school every year without the basic knowledge and skills that they need to be gainfully employed by the private sector. Our educational system has to undergo a fundamental overhaul immediately. We cannot continue doing “the same old thing,” because the longer we perpetuate the present system of educating our young people the longer it would take the CNMI to achieve full employment for the people of the commonwealth. And only afterwards, for those positions that we clearly do not have the manpower or the skills to do the work needed, may the private sector then employ guest workers. What we have been practicing for a long time now is just the reverse. And this has to stop immediately.
The third thing that we need to actively pursue is to begin an active partnership between the government and our high schools and community college on one hand, and the private sector and foreign investors on the other hand. The practice of relying on guest workers to do the work that many of our unemployed local residents could do must stop. In order for this to happen, the parties (i.e., the government, the public schools and the private sector) must get together, sit down and discuss this unhealthy situation regarding the area of unemployment of local residents. The apparent reasons for this sad practice are the lack of enforcement of the labor laws by the government; the apparent preference by many employers in the private sector to continue employing guest workers because they presumably are more dependable; the lack of interest of many unemployed local residents to be employed at $3.15 per hour, a wage that is less than the federal entitlement benefits that one could get from food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing assistance; and the lack of training and skill by many local residents to do the work required by the private sector. It seems to me that this problem should be quite easy to fix, if only we begin addressing and removing the causes of the problem of unemployment in the CNMI. The active partnership with the private sector must begin immediately, if we are to start turning things around.
The foregoing are some of the basic and fundamental issues that we could address locally and that we should be addressing immediately. As they say, no one could help us but ourselves. For if we are not interested in improving our lives and the quality of life in the CNMI, no one would. We have to take charge of the situation. We cannot leave things to chance. If our leaders will not lead, then we must take the initiative and begin forcing them to take positive actions to improve the quality of life in the CNMI. Maybe our young people, like the group that began actively speaking last week, could serve as the core organizing group for a new movement to start making positive changes in the CNMI.

JOSE S. DELA CRUZ
Navy Hill, Saipan