“Loophole” politics

The August 5th issue of the Honolulu Advertiser featured a very startling front page story on the mainland Chinese refugee crisis besetting Guam. The story was startling because it actually used the word “loophole” to describe U.S. immigration laws that apply to Guam. This, the Honolulu Advertiser explained, was a “quirk of history,” whereby Guam (closer to China than California) fell under U.S. Immigration control through its American acquisition from the Spanish-American War of 1898.

INS control of Guam’s immigration was called a “loophole” because it allowed mainland Chinese boat people to seek political asylum in the United States. Under this US immigration “loophole,” mainland Chinese boat people have every incentive to take the perilous journey to Guam, in order to–hopefully–make their way to America under federal policies.

Naturally, this news story amazed me, because it was the first time U.S. immigration control of Guam was ever referred to as a “loophole”–a term often exploited to deride the CNMI’s local immigration control and Headnote 3 (a) tariff exemption provision. How utterly ironic!

When the U.S. media (including the Honolulu Advertiser) wishes to deride the CNMI as a bastion of labor abuse, they use the word “loophole” almost as a dirty smear label that implies cheating or fundamental unfairness. Now that Guam has a Chinese refugee crisis, they use the exact same word to clearly suggest that U.S. immigration should not apply to Guam because it is causing this Chinese crisis. They call it a curious “quirk of history”–an accident–and imply that it should be rectified; that Guam should have its own local immigration control–something they are desperately trying to revoke from the CNMI at the same time.

I call this hypocrisy–the “loophole politics” of double standards Depending on how it serves their purposes, they (the U.S. media and federal authorities) will use the exact same word–”loophole”–to advance their agenda. The same word will be used to advance two diametrically opposed positions.

What the feds, labor unions and media sensationalists don’t realize, however, is that even with INS control of California immigration, they are still having problems. Consider a recent (August 3) story in the Los Angeles Times (“INS Inspector Accused of Smuggling Drugs, People”).

According to the L.A. Times story, Richard Lawrence Pindeda, 41, a U.S. immigration inspector since 1987, was charged with “smuggling undocumented immigrants and marijuana from Tijuana through the San Ysidro border crossing.”

The story also reports that federal agents arrested Keith Manuel Johnson, 38, another INS inspector, “on charges that he sneaked three Mexican women without documents through the San Ysidro entry while on duty a year ago.”

And that’s no loophole.