During the boom years of the garment industry, some of our public officials and their garment friends were making millions and millions of dollars while turning a blind eye to the influx of foreigners and the massive abuses in our local immigration system.
Well-connected recruiters and crafty consultants had a back door to our local immigration system and made lots of money off the backs of poor foreigners who were promised good paying jobs that turned out to be nonexistent or involved low wages and substandard working conditions.
At the behest of garment manufacturers, the CNMI government spent millions of dollars in taxpayer money to hire lobbyists and fight the federalization of minimum wage and immigration.
Those garment boom years enriched only the manufacturers and some of our public officials while bankrupting the local government and flooding the CNMI with foreigners who remitted money to their home countries.
Now the CNMI has no source of additional revenue and its economy is getting worse. Our officials have also neglected the Retirement Fund and yet are blaming our federal government for the mess they have created.
They have imposed high power rates on our people and cut government working hours.
All this is very identical to the corporate greed that the Wall Street protesters are criticizing all over the nation.
But some of our public officials continue to deny and ignore all these facts.
JACK O. ROMOLOR
Portland, Oregon
