NMI’s lack of definition

Historically, the CNMI has chased the elusive dollar beginning with Marianas reintegration in the late ’50s. We did it with the cargo cult mindset that the green bag is part of the Annual Christmas Drop hailing from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. There’s a drop but it wasn’t the green bag.

We continued chasing the elusive dollar in what’s now known as the Covenant Agreement. But it was excluded lest the new government would go broke instantly. Our annual budget then was about $9 million in the incipient years of our constitutional government. So there’s nothing up that alley either.

We moved on approving casino gambling even against the will of the people on Saipan who shot it down twice in a plebiscite. It’s a pipedream we feel good about as misery and hopelessness deepens. No wonder the persistent disorientation and the unlikelihood of economic triumph up ahead. There emerges the instant soba mindset dangerous at any and every speed.

The latest fad is ethnic hegemony, ignoring that the CNMI is a permanent part of the U.S. It comes with the mixed messages of ethnic dilution via the casino industry. Is the CNMI sovereign, hence the push for ethnic hegemony? Which is which: a nonexistent sovereignty, hegemony, or cultural dilution?

The apparent misgivings are a tale that most folks aren’t necessarily conversant of pertinent Covenant provisions. Thus emerges the misguided agenda of proponents spouting nonexistent NMI sovereignty. Appalling the pregnancy of willful disconnection and disorientation.

The spins that dissenters posit as statement of facts—on various Covenant provisions—are basically ludicrous assertions that the sun now rises in the west. That you refuse to stick within the realistic context of the agreement doesn’t magically make it true. It still is an agenda that refuses to employ intellectual integrity. So where would this discussion lead the innocent other than soothing the ego while spouting fraud and lies?

We’re still chasing the elusive dollar with the usual myopic view. Well, it is still earned the old-fashioned way. Finally, with the fiscal cogs, nuts, bolts, and tire coming off our wagon, isn’t it time to engage meaningful organization in the development of governance via fully considered socioeconomic plan to commence the long journey to recovery?

Immigration debate

We use the term “culture” to justify “indigenous only” mindset, therefore the recommendation to delete pathway to citizenship provision under S. 744. It’s your right to say your piece. But the anomaly is in the obvious lack of enforcement of INS law that focuses on jurisdiction.

It says, “The language of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, from which the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was derived, provides the key to its meaning. The 1866 Act provides: “All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

“As this formulation makes clear, any child born on U.S. soil to parents who were temporary visitors to this country and who, as a result of the foreign citizenship of the child’s parents, remained a citizen or subject of the parents’ home country, was not entitled to claim the birthright citizenship provided by the 1866 Act.”

This should have been the corpus of House Resolution 18-34, including bringing to the attention of INS the enforcement of this provision forthwith. It would have spared everybody the vitriolic and racist exchanges best left unsaid. I hope the purposeful omission of enforcing the law by INS isn’t a design to instigate disruption between host and aspirants of residency. But then how do we know that such inaction isn’t a fully concocted pretense of ignorance of the law?

Driftwood in an open ocean

The obvious lack of a cohesive definition of our future basically turns the fate of these isles to one of a piece of driftwood out in the open ocean. It’s tossed about aimlessly as waves, the wind and currents whip it about. Is this our future in microcosm?

More often than not, my aspiration is one of optimism, however guarded but reality check says otherwise. Let’s, however, assume that by accident we manage to put our fuzzy arithmetic together with the right derivatives. Here’s the CNMI 20 years from today:

The military became a major sector in the islands supporting U.S. security in Asia and the Pacific. Communities were established on Tinian, southern Saipan, and Pagan. The push for ethnic hegemony slowly disappeared in the rear mirror. Sustaining it turns problematic as more of our people became mobile and moved elsewhere. The CNMI became “home” mostly in memory. Why do I feel this way?

There’s a grand design somewhere back in the ’60s that opened the fertile ground for eventual militarization of the entire Marianas Archipelago. Slowly, we would be dealing with the military constantly too.

Coupled with the lack of conscious leadership at home, what’s our future in scattershot followership? While the military tries to assimilate diplomatically into the local community, it never loses sight of its mission and purpose with or without our aspirations. Divide and conquer isn’t from without but within.

Opportunities at home are nonexistent. Thus our educated children aren’t necessarily enamored returning home. Fully suited communities throughout the country abound.

Lest we forget, people move elsewhere to explore filial opportunities. It’s the opportunity to establish and nurture decent lifestyles in communities that are endowed with a good educational system, job opportunities, healthcare, entrepreneurship, and upward mobility.

Opportunities at home have diminished significantly, thus the persistent exodus of more locals. But then let’s keep singing “Are you sleeping…” It fits the bill of dystopia—where nothing works—we’ve nursed for so long, to our gradual demise.

Unless we remap paradigms to rein in economic prosperity and opportunities, we’d be landing in the magma-ridden playground of hell—a scene after an election—where there’s nothing downstairs but misery, bubonic plague, and death.