And then what?
I see no point in delaying the inevitable — and prolonging the people’s anxieties. It’s like a condemned man asking the firing squad to please shoot him on Nov. 1 instead of June 1. It’s still going to happen.
I do know where they’re coming from, those asking for a delay. It’s what I call the gambler’s mentality. A gambler who has lost everything will refuse to quit. He believes that his luck will turn around. All he needs is someone who’ll lend him, say, a hundred bucks so he can have his one last throw of dice.
The CNMI has been gambling since it decided to create a third world economy in the 1980’s. CNMI leaders bet on the indifference of the feds while labor and immigration abuses flourished in the commonwealth. They bet on Abramoff and his Republican friends. They bet on the garment industry whose viability they knew would end in 2005. They bet that the CNMI government could hire local residents forever.
Now the governor, a former executive of a company that used to own the biggest garment factories and most of the poker arcades on island — now he’s betting $400,000 of taxpayer money that a federal court would ignore or misread the Covenant provision that allows the U.S. Congress to federalize local immigration.
All government agencies claim they’re “critical” and short of staff. And yet the government is bulging with personnel — some 4,000 of them. The problem is that, in my estimate, more than 60 percent are not needed — they’re political hires. Hence, the really critical agencies like Public Health and PSS are struggling to get the funds they need to hire essential personnel. At the other agencies, the essential personnel — those hired based on their qualifications — are few and they’re expected to carry the load.
The CNMI government became what it is because the commonwealth leaders decided to create a private sector that could only hire cheap, foreign labor. And this third world economy was supposed to fund the ever growing expenses of a government that believed it was Santa Claus and everyday was Christmas. The entire setup was a pyramid scheme. It could not be sustained and was bound to collapse.
And this is the system that the governor and like-minded politicians are clinging to, like a baby still sucking on an already empty milk bottle.
For some hopelessly and willfully misinformed guest workers, the word “organic” is like a mantra. They keep saying it as if it has anything to do with the federalization law. This newspaper has consistently demolished the myths surrounding federalization, but most guest workers prefer to believe comforting falsehoods. They’re still in the first stage of grief: denial.
The Organic Act, in any case, is a law enacted by the U.S. Congress that creates a U.S. territory or an agency that will manage certain federal lands. Shortly after the Philippines was annexed by the U.S., Congress passed the Philippine Organic Act, which created a Philippine Assembly and included provisions for a bill of rights and the appointment of two P.I. delegates to the U.S. Congress.
The Guam Organic Act of 1950 designated the island as an unincorporated territory of the U.S. and provided for the creation of GovGuam with officials elected by the people of Guahan. The Organic Act serves as Guam’s constitution. (Guamanians believe they should write their own constitution, but that’s another story.) The Organic Act also granted Guam residents U.S. citizenship, and this is why most guest workers get excited every time they hear the word “organic.”
Unlike Guam, however, the CNMI negotiated its own Covenant with the U.S. The Covenant provided for the creation of a self-governing local government with a constitution drafted and approved by the local people. The Covenant, like Guam’s Organic Act, granted U.S. citizenship to local residents.
In other words, nothing “organic” — whatever that means — will happen to the CNMI because it is already part of the U.S. and its local residents are already U.S. citizens.
Federalization will merely extend U.S. immigration law to the islands. As this newspaper has repeatedly pointed out, that law is not a magic wand that will transform guest workers into green card holders. We will remain guest workers — those with qualified employers — but under federal immigration law which imposes many restrictions and charges expensive fees.
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