Good news? Yeah. Progress? No.

While the business community is justifiably hopeful that the three-year limit on alien workers is facing the axe, the underlying issues go unresolved.

Namely, how can we regard the scrapping of an unproductive law as “progress?” We’re taking two steps backwards, one step forward, and complimenting ourselves on how enlightened we are?

Making economic policy based on gut feeling and intuition is not a move calculated to make the sophisticated circles of international investors floored with awe about us. Come to think of it, I have seen a few floored with awe, if “awe” can be used in the pejorative sense.

So…laws are made. Then changed–or maybe not changed. Then scrapped, sometimes. Then re-crafted. The cycle isn’t going to change. Nobody really thinks it will. At most, existing businesses here might get a little more breathing room, like stumbling on an air pocket in a smoke filled building. Big deal. The economic roof is still on fire. Those who fled for the exits already know that, of course, but you don’t hear from them, they’re as conspicuously absent as the closed businesses they left behind.

At this economic stage, the real question is: Who is going to wind up holding the bag? This game of musical chairs can’t last forever. When the music stops–and it’s gonna’ stop–something’s got to give. One set of victims, or so I suspect, will be local families that lose land due to financial desperation. I’ve got no idea where they’ll be able to turn. I don’t know who they’ll blame for their plight when it comes time for hindsight, but it will be interesting to see how that blame game plays out.

Meanwhile, we keep talking about investors, without talking about any fundamental economic changes here. It’s like trying to sell a car with a broken head gasket by plastering an ever growing stack of “for sale” signs on it. Maybe–just maybe–somebody will give some thought to fixing the actual problem. Ok…maybe not.

Back to the three year labor limit; so it’s repealed. Ok. Great. Then what? Has the fundamental thought process really changed? Hope. It’s merely a reactive gig, based on the outcries from businesses. There’s no epiphany at issue.

And there will likewise be no epiphany after the economy falls off a cliff. Sure, discussions will become more heated, but that will just lower, not raise, the tone of discourse. Angry factions will have to be appeased as blame is dodged. But will that pass for actual economic “policy”? Yeah, I guess it will.

Sorry to be a gray lining in a silver cloud, but the specter of repealing the three-year labor limit doesn’t change the big picture at all. The real issue is the thought process behind the creating of the law in the first place. Until that matter is settled, we’re just moving backwards at a slower rate.

Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. “Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com”