A short-sighted policy that will short-change the CNMI

After quoting CNMI statute 4 CMC & 8133 (a) stating the requirements to be CUC executive director, Dr. Jesus Camacho stated we should “Give Local People the Benefit of the Doubt.”

On the contrary, we should stop preferring CNMI locals based upon their race over other Americans; we should stop giving them a lower standard to meet, and require them to compete on a truly level and meritocratic playing field.

By continually playing favorites to CNMI locals, CNMI legislators, human resource departments, and others think they are doing CNMI locals a service. Rather, they are doing them a grave diservice that, if continued, will come back to haunt the CNMI in the future when conditions change.

When conditions change—when international levels of excellence in work and education will be required to survive—far too many CNMI locals will remain behind. By saying in essence that, “You don’t have to meet as high a measure just because you are a local,” CNMI policy makers remove the required level of incentive for enough CNMI locals to truly prepare for changed conditions, where sacrifice, exceptionally hard study, and the achievement of high-level skills and excellence when compared internationally will be non-optional. It is a shortsighted and even bigoted policy, and it is about time someone said so and that the message caught on.

Think about a CNMI high school student who, under the influence of a special teacher, is right now thinking of pursuing a string of graduate degrees, as Abe Malae has done. The “take home” message the student receives and that he or she is socialized into in the CNMI through government policies in hiring is that he or she really need not work and study exceptionally hard, and achieve true excellence.

Why should the student? What amounts to a handout is waiting around the corner: a dumbed-down hiring requirement, specifically lowered so CNMI locals may be placed into high-level jobs. While this may give the new hire and other locals a feeling of “ruling their island,” the feeling is false, based on the immediate, and contributive to the local entitlement culture. These cushion locals from the need to adequately prepare for harder economic and social realities coming to their island. Meanwhile, a great many “outside” observers, including ones the CNMI needs such as investors sit back and wag their heads in amazement and go elsewhere.

By playing favorites in its hiring policies, the CNMI is sowing the seeds for its own increasing global marginalization and internal fragmentation. It is past time to see the future and respond in kind.

C.M. Jones
Capitol Hill