We snooze for nine years ignoring the \u201ctransition\u201d aspect of U.S. Public Law 110-229. Fact-checking the issue the governor is mandated to implement it. After the Fitial lawsuit it was ignored. It\u2019s now at the front door yelling, EVERbody home?<\/p>\n
Goes to show our adolescent perception of policy issues originating at the national level. We employ the usual lasses-faire attitude convinced it\u2019s the same as a municipal council resolution we adopt and ignore with impunity.<\/p>\n
Ooops! It\u2019s a show of dysfunction without refreshing commitment to do the right things by doing them right. The NMI delegation must have gotten off the train in the wrong town in D.C. Chest pounding mea culpa isn\u2019t helping! Business strategy versus policy are two substantially two different beasts!<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t it true that we have a 21 percent unemployment rate? Why display purposeful ignorance across the Pacific? Wouldn\u2019t this be a serious point of interest by the U.S. Congress who instantly see serious anomaly in our request?<\/p>\n
Our concerns run head on collision with mounting national controversy\u2014foreign felons entering the country killing law abiding citizens\u2014through the chain migration and visa lottery system inherent under current U.S. immigration law. Trump is ever ready to kill both issues. He\u2019s even killing H-4 visa for spouses of legal foreigners. Is there room for accommodation of our issue or would it be trashed as inconsequential?<\/p>\n
We may have succeeded conveying our sentiments to a U.S. Senate subcommittee headed by Sen. Lisa Murkowski. What about the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives especially those from states whose constituents have been killed by foreign criminals in recent past? <\/p>\n
Insanity:<\/strong> How do we navigate against their sentiment to eradicate foreign felons and jobs for spouses (H-4 visa) of legal foreign workers? The highly loose immigration policy is also known as politically correct insanity!<\/p>\n The best alternative now is \u201cpremium processing\u201d recommended by attorney Janet King. It grants professional and technical experts from without the chance to retain their jobs while we work over the next decade to train and educate our young people.<\/p>\n Reiterating, the transition provision was intended for any sitting governor to ensure implementation. There\u2019s no two ways about it. The law must be followed.<\/p>\n Beyond:<\/strong> The Covenant Agreement permits our seeking economic assistance through the Department of State from Japan and nearby Asian countries.<\/p>\n But this requires some leadership to explore how do we rein-in help via an organized and fully defined plan. It may require initial visits by experts to see our level of growth in, e.g., farming, fishing, and techno-industry. It\u2019s a major undertaking that requires a lot of review and discussion in order to begin formulation of programs and their subsequent implementation. Unless we buckle down to some defined and organized plans nothing moves anywhere to our detriment.<\/p>\n I recall local farmers who used to watch an old lady pass by a coffee in the morning with a 50-lb sack loaded with something. Returning, the sack is empty, folded, and placed neatly in the back. They finally sent someone to check her out one fine morning. <\/p>\n She\u2019s been selling young and crispy cucumber that meets the taste of Japanese tourists. Our focus wasn\u2019t on customer taste but how large our beastly cucumber could get that weighs a ton. Later it is fed to our pigs. Wasted! We eventually learned the simple basics of marketing that it involves the taste of your customers not your personal greed found in your heavy and mush cucumber!<\/p>\n You have to know the taste of the market in order to succeed. You feed it what it wants and you succeed in marketing your produce. Japanese love yellow fin tuna. We love bonito tuna and catch a lot of them that are sold to locals. Marketing it in hotels isn\u2019t going anywhere. Our bonito smells woefully fishy unlike yellow fin tuna. I\u2019m sure you know why we love bonito\u2014it\u2019s fishy!<\/p>\n Definition:<\/strong> Sad that 40 years into self-government we\u2019re still as disorganized in our ways than we did at the outset. Ever wondered why? Che`chu` dihada! We lack definition in most everything we take up. It\u2019s as temperamental as the growth we see today under a single-engine tourism economy. <\/p>\n If escalation of tension with North Korea heightens that shuts down travel all over the region how would we survive? Eh, take your fishing pole so we sit it out along the leeward side of the island burning canned tuna and half-cooked rice plus plenty of beer to drown our fear. Nah! There has to be a better way out of this piling mess of hardship in the villages.<\/p>\n Pension:<\/strong> Having taken full retirement since a decade ago I often ponder upon the fiscal posture of the NMI specifically as it relates to funding for this program.<\/p>\n The old pension program owes over $700 million in debt, which is paid gradually through a program. The Settlement Fund financial backing is like an old telephone system: sometimes ring, sometimes no ring. It\u2019s fiscally unstable. <\/p>\n If the casino business stumbles, funding for the Settlement Fund careens and falls flat on its face. It\u2019s riddled with uncertainty. Yep! It happens when politicians played a hand into forging a very generous pension program we ill could afford. The net effect of such generosity is fiscal instability. EVERbody home?<\/p>\n Reversal:<\/strong> The lack of definition and persistent loose disposition leaves nothing behind for some respite of hope. I figure my best shot is to join the chorus intone, I\u2019d be home for Christmas though my gut is riddled with tension. Does it matter? We snooze for nine years ignoring the \u201ctransition\u201d aspect of U.S. Public Law 110-229. Fact-checking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8841,12701,13282,14866],"class_list":["post-266983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-felis-noche-buena","tag-janet-king","tag-lisa-murkowski","tag-merry-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266983","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n—
\nMerry Christmas yan Felis Noche Buena to one and all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"