Warped use of information

Perhaps our detractors have ignorantly used such phrase as “loss of 20,000 American jobs” to spike-up their ill-conceived agenda of federal takeover of immigration. After all is said with venomous bashing of the NMI, we retreat to sift through the maze to determine the tone and truth of their statements.

Fact: An Associated Press news account of Friday, June 4th, headlined “Unemployment at 29-Year Low” says “Unemployment edged down to 4.2 percent last month, returning to a 29-year low and helping workers who historically have had a harder time finding jobs.” It further says that figures show that the economic “expansion, the longest in peacetime history, has given the country a low overall unemployment rate while aiding minority groups, who traditionally lag behind in economic gains”. Source: US Department of Labor.

Of course, it is now clear that this vengeful though unjustified bashing of the NMI is being bankrolled by the US Textile Labor Unions who have convinced themselves that shutting down the apparel industry in the NMI would grant them the upperhand in giving entry level jobs to new immigrants from south of the border. Notice that the labor unions and its pet tigers in the US Congress are far more interested in giving jobs to foreigners who hail from Mexico, Latin and South America than this group of US Citizens situated in some strange Pacific waters south of Japan?

Then there’s the Caribbean Basin Initiative which would encourage more trade with our mother country and countries in the Caribbean while simultaneously the powers that be (Clinton administration) seek every iota of opportunity to drown positive and lasting investments in the NMI with multiple threats of denying the NMI control over immigration and minimum wage. Do we take these anti-NMI agenda lying down knowing that our forefathers too sacrificed lives, endured hardship during post war reconstruction period and the destruction of property which can never be repaid and restored even with money which came from the Micronesian Claims Act?

Our detractors must learn that we may not be “Americans”, but each of us is a “US Citizen” and we insist, before this century closes out, that you aggressively probe the performance of the lead federal agency in how it has grandly neglected its fiduciary responsibility to assist the CNMI attain not only a higher standard of living, but a “progressively” higher standard of living. It’s sad that the very architect of Marianas Bashing is leaving his post which goes to illustrate our point that he won’t be around to live the consequence of his ill-founded proposed policy of a federal takeover of the CNMI.

Interior’s Allen Stayman has demonstrated his callousness by way of his ultra insensitivity with respect to his ruination of the livelihood of the indigenous people each of whom is a US Citizen and now quizzes whatever happened to President Clinton’s pronouncement to ensure that the “economic good times…doesn’t leave anybody behind”. Lest you forget, Mr. Stayman, we may not be “Americans”, but each of us is a full-blooded US Citizen under the “Stars and Stripes Forever”. And there’s no two ways about it either.