— Johnny Carson
IT was like the Second Coming.
The signing of the federalization bill last week was greeted with rapture by most of the island’s guest workers, some of whom are already planning their trip to the mainland — U.S. ha, not China. Others assured me that a cousin of a friend’s aunt spoke to a U.S. Navy/Immigration/Interior/Embassy official and/or janitor who said that Elvis is Alive and yes, Efifania and Tiburcio, you will have green cards, soon, promise. But then I opened my mouth to explain the provisions of the federalization law, and suddenly everyone was looking at me as if I were a hooker attending her first Catholic Women’s League meeting. “Makapili!” someone hissed, referring to the Filipinos who collaborated with the Japanese military during World War II. When I pointed out that I wasn’t the one raring to forsake my Philippine passport and swear allegiance to a foreign country, my friends, make that ex-friends, told me that I would never get a postcard from them when they’re already in Disneyland.
Others said they received an e-mail from a friend of a relative of a neighbor of someone in Hawaii or Guam or Washington who said parents of U.S. citizen children will get green cards now that the feds have taken over CNMI immigration. When I pointed out that the federalization law has no such provision, someone reminisced about the good old days when heathens could still be burned at the stake.
Amazingly, despite everything that has been said and done about the federalization issue in the past two years, the green card myth persists. I first heard about it 15 years ago, a few days after I arrived on island, and I quickly learned that guest workers have been talking about it since the beginning of time. Like most myths, as I wrote two years ago, this one has a life of its own, sustained by the belief of those who wanted it to be true. Like a parasite, it draws nourishment from the unflagging faith of its willing host. For true believers, if it’s too good to be true then it should be true.
I really don’t relish the role of a party pooper, but the federalization law’s primary aim is to phase out the CNMI’s flexible guest worker program and phase in stringent federal immigration rules that have been the despair of many U.S. visa applicants in Manila and elsewhere in the Third World.
Some say that the law requires the feds to revisit the immigration status of long-term guest workers. But what P.L. 110-229 actually says is that: “The Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Governor of the Commonwealth, shall report to the Congress not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008. The report shall include…such recommendations to the Congress, as the Secretary may deem appropriate, related to whether or not the Congress should consider permitting lawfully admitted guest workers lawfully residing in the Commonwealth on such enactment date to apply for long-term status under the immigration and nationality laws of the United States.”
What’s required is a REPORT, which has to be prepared in consultation with the CNMI governor, that MAY RECOMMEND that Congress should CONSIDER a better immigration status for the guest workers…who will be lucky enough to cling onto their jobs in the next two years, in this economy.
Lots of qualifiers in that provision’s language. Not a slam-dunk, to quote a former CIA chief. For starters, I’m not quite sure if the next governor would commit political suicide by urging the feds to grant long-term status to guest workers. Moreover, immigration is such a hot-button issue in the states that not even the White House and like-minded members of Congress can pass reform legislation that everyone says has to be enacted.
I still believe that federalization will be good for the CNMI, in the long-term. Finally, local labor and immigration rules will no longer be a plaything for politicians and their friends in the business community. Finally, local employment will be a priority in the private sector — no ifs and certainly no buts.
Pohnpei, here I come!
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