Five thousand miles away and the CW crisis in the CNMI is one of the things that makes it difficult for me, a Saipan-born U.S. citizen born to a \u201ccontract worker\u201d family, to fall asleep at night.<\/p>\n
Growing up with small business owners as parents, a constant phrase I heard at home was \u201cI have to go process papers this week.\u201d Admittedly my family is one of the lucky ones. They aren\u2019t about to be deported\u2014yet. They have been one of the lucky ones for over 10 years now. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to say how long this luck will last under this broken immigration system. And for many of our friends and families, that time is up. Their families are being torn apart left and right and it breaks my heart and the hearts of all the families affected by this crisis to see it happening. <\/p>\n
They came here with good intentions, knowing full well the limitations of their status. They can\u2019t vote and they can\u2019t own land, they can only hope that if they become good citizens and pledge themselves to serving the islands, they can continue raising their kids without the oppressions of their home countries harming those children. They\u2019d rather take the hit for us. Because hoping as second class citizens in the islands is better than being first class citizens in nations that can\u2019t take care of them, admittedly. They\u2019re forced to take care of themselves with service to this community as their payment. <\/p>\n
They have done nothing but serve the community. In the midst of the economic disadvantage that makes it difficult to pay even the bills, how can you tell us to get immigration lawyers? In the midst of the political disadvantage of the vast majority of these workers and the population being ineligible to vote, how can you tell us it\u2019s our fault that policies are working against us when we had no political voice or power the whole time we worked for you? Your local government could have cleanly gotten rid of us way back if there\u2019s validity in your claims that we don\u2019t belong here. Evidently, just because it\u2019s the law, doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s right. You blame America for its faulty gun laws, but look in the mirror and see its reflection: your resistance, silent or otherwise, to advocating for these foreign workers in the CNMI. <\/p>\n
Many of our families have not spoken out against the racism we experience, and many don\u2019t even acknowledge it. It\u2019s unfathomable for me to see in the comments of these newspaper articles how so many of our islands\u2019 voting-eligible population remain vigilant in hate and resentment in an effort to still protect their own privileges. <\/p>\n
We have served these islands as second-class citizens silently for years\u2014protecting your privilege in order to sustain our families.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t fight against the fact that this land is yours. We fight against the displacement of our families. We fight against our services going unwarranted, when all our parents asked for was to stay, work for you, and give their children pathways to opportunity that the homeland could not give. <\/p>\n
You opened the doors to us, wide open compared to the sliver the United States did. That’s why our families are here. That\u2019s why we\u2019re here.<\/p>\n
Tell me, where do I\u2014and hundreds of other U.S. citizen millennials and children born to foreign workers\u2014stand in the light of these uncertain policies?<\/p>\n
When you tell our families to \u201cgo home,\u201d you\u2019re telling us\u2014 the children your islands have educated\u2014to not come back and serve this community.<\/p>\n
When you tell our families to \u201cstop taking your jobs,\u201d you\u2019re forcing us\u2014the children your islands have worked so hard to help send off to college\u2014to stop midway because our families lost jobs they\u2019ve been working in for as long as 10 years.<\/p>\n
When you tell our families that \u201ctime is up,\u201d you\u2019re telling us\u2014an entire generation of first generation Pacific Islander-bred U.S. citizens\u2014to lose hope in the islands.<\/p>\n
And we have the right to feel this way\u2014you\u2019ve made that clear. <\/p>\n
But many of us also see the way the islands will fall apart if we give in. Many of us don\u2019t want to hold on to anger. <\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing we have in common it\u2019s that we have come to call these islands home\u2014just as much as you have. And our families can see that. It\u2019s why they want to stay and support us. <\/p>\n
Last week I asked my mom through a phone call why, at this point, she won\u2019t go back to the Philippines\u2014 a valid question in the eyes of everyone that oppose immigration reform. She responded, \u201cIf I were only taking care of myself I would go back! But it\u2019s you kids that I\u2019m thinking about.\u201d My sister is 9 years old. My brother is 2 years old. All three of us are U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a question for y\u2019all: What makes you think that I\u2014 and hundreds of other Saipan-born U.S. citizens\u2014 would choose to go back to our parents\u2019 homeland, places so many of us have never even seen because of the limitations of these documents on our parents from traveling abroad, would want to suddenly relocate there?<\/p>\n
Before going off for school, I received a scholarship check from one of your foundations. For the longest time I told myself that after I graduate, I want to return and serve my community\u2014my home. But with the pervasiveness of this issue, it makes it harder to stay tenacious to that goal. <\/p>\n
Opportunity might be even better here in mainland America, maybe even for my parents when I petition them in two years. But I’ve never thought of it as a place I want to be in for the rest of my life. It isn\u2019t where my parents, who yearn to keep their simple lifestyle, want to be. While there\u2019s a lot for me to learn while I\u2019m here, mainland America is a foreign land to me. <\/p>\n
Here in Seattle, I identify as a Pacific Islander. Saipan is my home. As powerful as your privilege may be, it isn’t in the position of telling me, or my family, otherwise.<\/p>\n
Katrina Punzalan<\/strong> Five thousand miles away and the CW crisis in the CNMI is one of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[26,118,163,57],"class_list":["post-230211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-cnmi","tag-cw","tag-kids","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nUniversity of Washington ’19<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"