CNMI immigration system is harmful to children

I want you to imagine that you are a doctor who takes care of children at the Commonwealth Health Center, and I want you to imagine that you just discovered a young child with leukemia. If you can imagine that, you may understand why it is so offensive to me that Governor Fitial just decided to challenge the federal government on their planned takeover of immigration in Saipan.

Let me connect the dots, because the connection may not be obvious. You see, about half the children in the CNMI are born to contract workers. They grow up in barracks, they ride in the back of pickup trucks like baggage, they are thin with the meager diet that their parents can afford. However, they are U.S. citizens because they were born on United States soil. Even the children of illegal aliens are United States citizens by birth, certainly the children of legal contract workers have the same privilege. They have the same passport and same homeland that my children have, and they deserve a chance to make something with their lives.

The trouble is, the CNMI is a poor Commonwealth, and the care of a child with cancer is very expensive. There will continue to be children with cancer, because cancer happens, and in my memory of working at CHC we found cancer in a child at least once every six months—usually leukemia. I think that CHC tries to be fair, and tries to treat contract worker kids as well as the kids of Pacific Islanders, although I did find that contract worker kids were much less likely to have Medicaid and had more difficulty getting it than Pacific Islander kids. However, Medicaid in the CNMI has limited funds. Kids with cancer are very expensive. If a kid with cancer is born to poor Chamorro or Carolinian parents, they can move to Hawaii or California and say that they intend to stay and get Medicaid from that state or any of the other states in the United States. Contract workers have no such options, because they have no legal status in the United States. Their kids can’t move to California by themselves; their parents are aliens with no status there.

Now today, Governor Fitial announced that he would fight the federal government about the takeover of immigration. Fitial wants to keep the permanent underclass with cheap labor for the argument that cheap labor helps the economy of the CNMI. He thinks that it is harmful for business for the United States federal government to apply the same standards in the CNMI that is applied everywhere else. Governor Fitial wants to perpetuate the same system that creates a permanent underclass, and that makes for the sort of inequities that cost human lives, like maybe the next contract worker kid with cancer.

Most people in the CNMI are Christians. What do you suppose Jesus Christ would think about fighting to keep a system that creates a permanent underclass and that potentially costs children their lives? The argument to keep the cheap labor force is that it is necessary for the prosperity of the CNMI. What prosperity has it really brought? And to whom? And at what cost?

Those of you in the CNMI with any power must understand that this is a moral choice, and that defending the current system is a moral outrage. It is time that the CNMI stop selling the illusion of bringing workers to the United States under a parallel immigration system that often exploits workers, leads to human trafficking, and causes untold harm to families.

Governor Fitial, I want you to imagine looking into the eyes of a young Chinese or Filipino child with leukemia, a child who is a United States citizen, and having to tell their family that because the parents are not United States citizens that they do not have the option of getting good care for their kid. Imagine this, and then ask yourself whether your pursuit of a cheap labor force is really worth it.