Hafa Adai Senator Harkin!

Traditionally, the U.S. Interior Department provides the advance briefings for Congressional visitors to our islands, but as DOI doesn’t always speak for us, we would like to add our voice to the mix as you attempt to make some sense of the Commonwealth during a one day visit.

There has been far much more heat than light in what passes for a national discussion of labor problems and abuses in the CNMI. Our visitors, especially lawmakers and journalists, generally arrive armed with backgrounders and convictions instilled in them beforehand. In our experience, if you show same garment factory to two visitors, one will see a hell hole and the other, a worker’s paradise. Neither vision has much to do with reality, any more than most of the rhetoric thrown at the Commonwealth.

We can spot those with an open mind though and we appreciate them, like the Chinese-speaking New York Times reporter who dropped by recently and actually talked to garment workers. He reported their major complaint was not being given enough overtime, since they pile up thousands of dollars to take back to China while working here. Would you believe the same statement today if you heard it from the local garment industry?

We know that many mainland Americans do not know where we are or that we are proud U.S. citizens and that is part of our problem these days. After going through horrifying World War II experiences utterly unknown to most living Americans, the people of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands voted overwhelming in favor for the political status that we now enjoy. Not being able to vote for President and without representation in Congress, we’ve sometimes felt like third class citizens, unable to adequately defend ourselves against a coordinated and very public campaign that threatens to cripple our economy and substantially limit our future prospects as a self-sustaining island community. Despite it all, we remain proud Americans and determined to avail ourselves of a fair hearing which is the American way.

In 1999, the Office of Insular Affairs seems to know little of our history when it describes our Headnote 3A duty free importation status and control of local immigration as “loopholes.” In fact, the gospel of OIA has been that somehow, Washington was fooled into allowing large scale use of imported labor. Population projections back in the 1970s made it quite clear that we would never be able to sustain a modern American economy with a strictly local workforce and these concerns were reflected in the eventual Covenant Agreement signed by President Ford.

The record is clear. We don’t accept OIA’s version of history any more than we’re going to accept being “loophole” Americans.

As our leaders knew back then, our insular economy would need all the help it could get in the future. When the Asian economic crisis hit us, the bottom abruptly dropped out of our laboriously built tourism industry and we’re crossing our fingers and hoping that it will return.

Certainly you’ll hear these things today from business and government leaders and believe us, there is no exaggeration involved. We don’t need the sweeping change involved in “federalization” of labor and immigration controls to further complicate the tough situation we’re enduring right now.

Outside of striving to keep an open mind today, we ask one other thing and that’s to keep the feet of the federal officials with responsibilities for labor and related matters to the fire. Until quite recently, OIA had a staffer operating a campaign to shift blame for all abuses, alleged and otherwise to the CNMI government.
Somehow, ABC’s 20/20 segment and much other journalistic coverage neglected to include federal agencies for their failure to properly monitor and enforce federal labor law here in the Commonwealth.

As we see it, if there are illegal sweatshops operating in New York City, should a federal agency assign sole blame to Mayor Guilliani and should the taxpayers then underwrite a secret campaign to impose tighter federal controls on the city?

Enough of our own rhetoric. Enjoy your stay, brief though it is. Even our most severe critics give us credit for hospitality, even if it gets reported as a negative in the Washington Post.