“So if someone has lived on Saipan for 20 to 25 years, are non-US citizens and given the best years of their lives through hard manual labor; with minimal pay, I suspect you feel they have nothing to be entitled to whatsoever! I know that they had the choice and chance to leave this island, but they have remained here and taken away the chance of any locals to work and toil for a paycheck. The truth is, without them, where would Saipan be today; because they are the ones’ who built this Island. I feel this is discrimination, and we need not to turn our heads and accept it! Fight for their rights because they have no voice!”
Notice the use of the word “entitled.”
In any case, the argument here is that long-term guest workers “gave the best years of their lives” doing low-paying jobs that locals won’t even touch with a 10-foot pole so, therefore, the feds should give these nonresidents green cards.
There are massive flaws in this line of reasoning.
Guest workers came to Saipan so they can get paid more for the same jobs they perform back home. That is why we ended up staying here for years and years. True, some workers were abused or cheated, but they could file complaints, and a lot of them did. Yet almost all of them would rather remain here and seek new employment because, let’s face it, life was, still is, bleak back home.
Most of the nonresidents work for reputable employers and, through the years, have developed a fondness for island life — no traffic, no pollution, a low crime rate, beautiful beaches, easy living. Year after year they renewed their contracts while raising their U.S. citizen children.
Without guest worker labor not a lot of things could have been built on Saipan. On the other hand, without the CNMI’s generous guest worker program, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.
CNMI guest workers have rights, but these do not include getting a green card. Believing and insisting that they do is a form of wish fulfillment. The only way long-term guest workers can get an improved immigration status is through a law enacted by the federal government. But this is an extremely sensitive issue. It involves granting permanent residency to nonresidents who already outnumber local U.S. citizens in a small island community. It can only happen with the consent of the local people and I don’t think they’re eager to see themselves disenfranchised in their homeland. No one would want that anywhere else.
With or without green cards, long-term guest workers have benefited immensely from their stay here. That’s why we want to remain here. That we can’t get green cards under federalization is not “discrimination”; it’s simply the law.
Instead of whining over something we were never entitled to, we should be thankful for being given the opportunity to work and reside on these lovely islands.
Too late. The amicus curiae motion filed by the other indigenous group claims that the local population “will be diluted under the [federalization] law because foreign workers in the CNMI will for the first time be eligible for permanent residency.”
This was the same argument made by the NMI during the Covenant negotiations. The feds agreed to exempt the islands from federal immigration law until the U.S. Congress “acted to provide otherwise,” in the words of attorney Howard Willens.
What did the CNMI do after gaining control over immigration? It created an alien labor-dependent economy. Soon, nonresidents had already outnumbered locals while giving birth to U.S. citizen children.
Under the federalization law, this peculiar setup will cease to exist. The hiring of new guest workers will be restricted, which will finish off what remains of this Third World economy. There will be very few guest workers — most likely doctors and nurses — who can “enjoy the benefits of federalization law.” There will be no sizeable population of nonresidents that can “dilute” the local population.
The “dilution” already happened — under local immigration control.
Locals became a minority on their islands — under local immigration control.
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