NMI contributing to “Loss of American Jobs?”

As a US Citizen, I feel wounded by all the condescending statements from our detractors who have seen fit to employ the use of “loose guns” when capitalizing on half facts about labor conditions out here. The information scrounged up by the national media is without credibility. Most of the coverage are saddled on “human rights” for no other reason than the fact that it grabs headlines all across the country.

Perhaps the most fundamentally racist use of “Loss of American Jobs” must be ignorantly based on the apparent notion that the CNMI isn’t a part of the greater American political family. Thus, we’ve been relegated into political materials that fit the agenda of irrelevant politicians who had nothing to offer while searching for another career or mediocrity that comes out of the usual incompentency that we find in the US Department of Interior’s OIA.

I ask our detractors: Is this the reality of American Democracy? Would justice be served this group of US Citizens situated outside mainstream America who clearly have never benefited from the growth of their mother country’s economy? Is this exclusionary and condescending policy a reflection of how the national government sees the NMI–an inconsequence for all frustrated detractors to whip to death? Legally, we are part of a greater country but often reduced to a foreign country when ignorant national politicians accuse the NMI of contributing to the “Loss of American Jobs”. Let’s look at the facts:

• Nearly 12 million new workers have flooded the nation’s workplaces during the 1990s raising the fraction of Americans at work to its highest level in history, according to Mr. Peter G. Gosselin, LA Times Staff Writer, in his April 11th article “A Rising Tide Puts the Nation to Work”. A third of this group comprises of immigrants and the “nation has demonstrated anew both its capacity to absorb new arrivals and its tremendous need for them”.

“Indeed, were it not for immigrants, some regions like New England and the Mid-Atlantic states would have seen their labor forces–and with them, their economic prospects–shrink outright during the 1990s. The West Coast, especially California, would have seen its labor force grow at half or less of the rate that it actually grew”.

“If you’re asking if immigrants are important to the California economy, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. Now, a number of substantive issues or what I now call “tongue in cheek” facts have emerged and confirmed in Mr. Gosselin’s news article:

• The employment alien workers–called immigrants in the US mainland–has contributed tremendously to the thriving national economy. Now, I ask: Why would detractors deny the NMI what works even in their side of the Pacific?

• The free enterprise system works wonders and must not be blocked hastily with guest worker capping. We must allow for subsequent expansion when the economy picks up. There’s no capping in California, is there, Congressman George Miller?

What then is the fault of the NMI in the continuing controversy? Success! Success! Success!–in building a strong apparel industry from zero in 1983 to a $1.2 billion industry today. It goes without saying that if the NMI isn’t a beneficiary of the thriving national economy, then, Mr. President, unless OIA can work your policy on wealth and jobs creation in the NMI, tell the bullies to steer clear of trying to ruin what we’ve worked for over the last two decades to ensure that we don’t impose on the tax contributions of our fellow Americans across the country.

Jobless and helplessness isn’t our vision of the future of these islands. I’m sure you too share this viewpoint as trumpeted in your economic policy of wealth and jobs creation. Si Yuus Maase`!