Maximo reacts to Taotao Tano’s criticism of guest workers

The guest worker groups that held a 72-hour sit-in demonstration in front of the TSL Plaza in Garapan were not demanding improved immigration status, but only appealing for sympathy and understanding of their plight, the Philippine Consulate office in the CNMI clarified yesterday.

This was in reaction to a recent letter by Greg Cruz to Consulate General Wilfredo DL. Maximo where the Taotao Tano leader expressed his disappointment on the “continued demands for improved immigration status here in our homeland by foreign non-resident guest worker organizations such as DEKADA, United Workers Movement or Coalition and all other foreign organizations involved.”

Cruz said a demand of status is disrespectful to local U.S. citizens, whom he said “have been generously hosting the foreign guest workers in the CNMI over two decades.”

Cruz said the demands is “a sign of pure self-interest agendas and complete disrespect to the people of the Commonwealth.”

Maximo, however, didn’t agree with Cruz’s observation.

“I would characterize the guest worker groups more as appealing for sympathy and understanding in their quest for a betterment of their plight, something I’m sure you will not begrudge as a fellow Christian,” Maximo said in his response letter to Cruz.

Maximo stressed that the “sparse number” of those who held the four-day peaceful assembly “did not disrupt the conduct of normal activity in the area.”

Maximo said that peaceful and orderly exercise “is a privilege that you and I enjoy in this showcase of American democracy in the Western Pacific.”

In his letter to Maximo, Cruz said that any foreign guest worker who had lived for 10 to 27 years must submit through the proper administrative process.

The Taotao Tano leader also hit the worker group’s call to seek the assistance of Philippine President Macapal Arroyo to intervene and appeal to the U.S. government on behalf of the foreign guest worker organizations in the granting of more permanent immigration status.

Maximo said the plea to the Philippine president is well within the rights of the demonstrators.

“While we at the Philippine Consulate do not encourage people to engage in demonstrations of this sort for whatever reason, it would be presumptuous on our part to prevent them from exercising their basic rights to form associations and to peaceably assemble—rights guaranteed also under the Philippine Constitution, which was heavily patterned after the U.S. own Bill of Rights,” noted Maximo in his letter to Cruz.

“I would say therefore, let these poor folks pursue, no matter how faint or hopeful, their quest for improved immigration status,” Maximo told Cruz.