THE new CNMI women’s national soccer team is reportedly restricting membership to U.S. citizens. Recently, such restrictions were also imposed on participation in the Pacific Games.
These restrictions should be abolished. A residency requirement may be appropriate if there is really concern about “ringers,” but citizenship as such is irrelevant to sport, and a citizenship restriction serves only to unjustly exclude many of the best and most enthusiastic athletes.
Imposing a requirement of U.S. citizenship is especially wrong for the CNMI. It is, after all, a CNMI team, not a U.S. team, that is being formed, and in the CNMI most of the population, especially most of the young-adult sports-playing population, are not U.S. citizens. Indeed, the CNMI is, in many ways, a kind of post-national society. That fact may make us unique in the world, but we should not just pretend it doesn’t exist and organize our national teams on principles designed for very different kinds of places.
Consider, for example, the case of a soccer-loving Thai citizen, who has lived here for eleven years and is married to a U.S. citizen (me), but has never seen the need to become one herself, precisely because the CNMI, not the U.S., is her home. It would be an ironic twist of fate if she, along with the hundreds of similar IR’s, free-associated citizens, and contract workers long active in CNMI sports, were categorically excluded from CNMI teams, while (for example) any bunch of club mates on one-year contracts could practically step off the plane from California and declare themselves the CNMI team, simply because they have the right “citizenship.”
I suppose the restriction will be blamed on the requirements of FIFA, the IOC, etc. However, there is no need for CNMI teams to compete under the aegis of organizations that plainly do not understand the CNMI. CNMI rugby teams, for example, have competed with distinction for years with teams composed mostly of Tongans and Samoans, and a handful of U.S. citizens. Why can’t a soccer team, or any other team, do the same? This is especially true in what is only supposed to be an exhibition game, but the same logic applies to sanctioned events as well.
The CNMI should refuse to participate in any sporting event or organization that imposes a citizenship restriction. Doing so would be in the honorable tradition of (for example) the 1958 University of Buffalo football team, which turned down an invitation to the Tangerine Bowl upon learning that its two black players would be barred from playing by Florida segregation laws. At a bare minimum, any participation should be combined with vocal protest.
A national team is supposed to be a unifying force. Even the Iraqis put aside their differences recently to cheer their soccer team to the silver medal in the Asian Games. A citizenship restriction makes it a divisive force in the CNMI, and that fact alone shows that it is the wrong approach for us.

JED HOREY
As Matuis, Saipan