An advocate group of young voters was formed Friday to address the plight of U.S. citizen children of guest workers who have been separated from their parents or who were forced to leave their island home after their parents lost their jobs and had to go back to their home countries.<\/p>\n
According to organizer Irene Tantiado, the group of 12 also discussed efforts to get more youths like themselves to register as voters.<\/p>\n
She said the initial meeting gathered 12 core members, all of whom are above 18 years old and are registered voters.<\/p>\n
Tantiado said that, while she organized the meeting, it was the youth themselves who led the discussions and came up with the idea of organizing themselves into a group and electing officers.<\/p>\n
Julius Reyes was elected chairman of the group, while Lawrence Deleon Guerrero became vice chairman and Aaron Paul Roque was elected secretary.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Roque, who turns 20 in August, said that while the group is not yet official\u2014they have yet to settle on a name, social media, or phone contacts\u2014they think it is important to voice out their concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur teenagers, our youth, are the next governors, the next teachers, the next professionals, so why not get involved now? Step up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Roque said they wish to voice their concerns for better status for guest workers.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Guest workers] have stayed on island for a long time, and if you would be reasonable and logical, they have already contributed a lot to the islands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that, like other members of the group, he personally knows of a friend whose parents\u2019 status eventually will force her to live on her own on island.<\/p>\n
According to Roque, the group for now does not support a party or candidate for this year\u2019s elections, nor do they intend to tell their members who to vote for. Instead, they wish to educate themselves and other youth on their rights and options.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important for us to help out some youth that don\u2019t know about their right to vote, to practice voting, to be involved,\u201d Roque said.<\/p>\n
Tantiado said that of the thousands of registered voters on island, there are many more who are unregistered.<\/p>\n
According to Roque, the group hopes to meet this week, with a working date of Friday set. <\/p>\n
The next meeting, according to him, will be to finalize the group\u2019s name, as well as map out their agenda. He said their group\u2019s age range as of now is from 18 to 20 years old.<\/p>\n
Last week\u2019s meeting was held at a member\u2019s Anaks apartment residence.<\/p>\n
Tantiado said the venue for this week\u2019s meeting is yet to be set.<\/p>\n
For more information about this week\u2019s meeting, or voter registration in general, call Tantiado at 989-0258.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An advocate group of young voters was formed Friday to address the plight of U.S….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[866,223],"class_list":["post-44078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-irene-tantiado","tag-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44078","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}