Not just approach them or talk to them, but to get them on your side. If the indigenous people and their government themselves are asking the feds for a better status for their guest workers, then it should be a cinch.
Right now, however, the guest worker advocates are claiming that their situation here is so bad, so un-American, that the feds should step in and wave their magic wand to transform these “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free” into green card holders.
But this begs the question. If it is so bad here, why are we still here? And some of us have been here for over 10 years! If our conditions are awful, why do we call this place “home”? Why do we ask the feds not to “separate” us from our U.S. citizen kids? (No one is trying to do that, however. The feds are not telling us to go and leave our U.S. citizen kids behind. Our “problem” is that we don’t want to leave, and the way we use our kids to advance our personal agenda is considered tasteless by some people.)
Are there labor abuses here? Certainly. But these incidents are also reported in other countries, including the U.S. We who came from a nation of overseas workers should know.
Unlike their counterparts in most other countries, however, guest workers in the CNMI are protected by laws. We can file complaints. We can go to the feds. We can raise a howl in the media. We can hold rallies. We can march. And we can do all that while raising a family of U.S. citizen kids.
Let’s be honest. We have a better, more hopeful life here. That’s why we sign those annual contracts year after year. That’s why we stick around despite not having a regular job.
Our stay in the CNMI, moreover, and the islands’ exemption from U.S. immigration law are allowed by federal law. That will change this November, but the federalization law passed by U.S. lawmakers who were “touched” and “moved” by the stories they had heard about the CNMI’s guest workers — that law will not improve our status. Congress has to pass a new law to do that.
Our “plight” is not a civil rights issue. We are not American citizens whose rights are being suppressed because we’re black. We are foreigners on American soil whose entry and stay here are allowed by the law that applies here.
According to a 1981 legal analysis prepared by the Congressional Research Service and the Library of Congress, “No citizen has a constitutional right to compel the admission into the United States of their families, nor does any alien have a constitutional right to immigrate.” (My italics.) The executive summary of this analysis can be found in the fascinating transcript of the congressional hearing on the U.S. Virgin Islands Nonimmigrant Alien Adjustment Act of 1981, which is available online: http://www.loc.gov/law/find/hearings/pdf/00183878554.pdf
Let’s not talk about rights when we ask — and we should be asking, not demanding — for improved status. This is a humanitarian issue. We should be directly appealing to the people who have allowed us to work, reside and raise families in their homeland.
I trust in the goodness and generosity of the indigenous people. I’ve been their guest for 16 years now. And I know that they don’t appreciate the depiction of their commonwealth as an island of abuses. They will point out that the most notorious cases of labor and immigration abuses here were perpetrated by non-indigenous people.
Let’s show more appreciation for these islands we want to call home. Let us, for once, care also for issues that affect the rest of the people of the CNMI. But right now, all we complain about is our not having a permanent status in a place we badmouth and whose people we accuse of maltreating us.
Who are we kidding? The local people know that once we get green cards most of us will be out of here faster than you can say “pit stop.”
Some say my opinions about this issue are handing “ammunition” to those who oppose the granting of improved status.
Really? Those who disagree with you are just “dumb” and can’t think for themselves? I don’t think so.
As I’ve pointed out last week, the feds granted improved status to 7,000 guest workers of the U.S. Virgin Islands (whose population then was 100,000) primarily because the elected leaders of that territory supported it. And these politicians were on the same page because it was “politically expedient.” Apparently, the population of the children of the guest workers and of former guest workers whose status had already improved was a crucial factor. The CNMI is not there yet. But 10 more years without federalization and I believe we will find ourselves in a political situation similar to what the U.S. Virgin Islands had in the early 1980s.
We should also remember that the U.S. Virgin Islands’ guest workers came mostly from neighboring islands. Says then-U.S. Virgin Islands Congressman Ron de Lugo: “There had existed for centuries a mostly unrestricted flow of residents between the islands. This was especially true of the people of the former Danish West Indies and the nearby British Virgin Islands. There was hardly a U.S. Virgin Islander without close family relationships on other islands of the eastern Caribbean.”
I was “assured,” in any case, that improved status is likely to be included in the national immigration reform measure that will come from the White House. But President Obama recently admitted that there’s already too much on his plate, and immigration reform — a most contentious issue in the states — will have to wait.
Can the ruling Democrats, who are now getting bloodied in the healthcare debate, pass a more controversial measure in 2010 — an election year? A bipartisan immigration reform bill was introduced in 2007 in the Democratic Congress with the backing of the then-Republican White House, but they just couldn’t pass it.
And then there’s Guam. The original federalization measure included the granting of nonimmigrant status to qualified CNMI guest workers. That was removed from the final version because Guam didn’t want its residents competing for jobs with the CNMI guest workers. Where does Guam stand now? And what about CNMI officials? Besides Tina Sablan, do you know of any other elected official or politician running for office this year who has publicly announced that he or she supports improved status for guest workers?
Sure, perhaps there are U.S. lawmakers willing to give CNMI guest workers improved status and ignore the wishes of the local people and their government, but they still need to introduce legislation, accept testimony, conduct public hearings,and then pass the bill. We’re not there yet. We’re not even close. There is no pending bill. And even if improved status is going to “happen,” we still don’t know when and how, and whether we’re still in the CNMI when that time comes. Meanwhile, what is the harm in reaching out to the local people and their government, and assuring them of our gratitude and our good intentions?
But then again, we’re all entitled to our own opinions.
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