In response Danny Aquino

Well Mr. Aquino, you succeeded in doing the exact opposite of what you had intended by promoting an Anti-Dekada movement. When you form an “Anti” you are saying that there is something that has gained so much momentum that there must be an opposing force put in place to stop it. There is no way that Dekada will do diddly, and you know, they wouldn’t even be here if some of us did something about it—and I don’t mean crying to our congressman about it.

The truth is that the reason why nonresident workers are in the CNMI in the first place is because most of the residents are not willing to work. Of the few that do, several take excessive days off for wakes and funerals, excessively call in sick, repeatedly show up late, possess a poor attitude, and ride a pugua buzz throughout the day, or just plain don’t show up.

Go ahead and take offense if you want, but you know it’s true. Please regale me with your tales of the hard-working local who made these islands great. If that was the case, I would not live on Saipan—named by the Japanese. There wouldn’t be people running around with names like Hofschneider, Babauta, Benevente, Sablan, Camacho, Reyes, Tenorio, or Celis were it not for the Germans and the Spanish.

Instead, the greatest local accomplishment comes in the form of our construction. We carved out the latte stones before anyone trod on our shores, and now that they have, we have constructed a system that gives us a lazy advantage in the workplace.

In your letter, you said, “It is utterly appalling to know that individuals such as this exist and profit from it through intimidation tactics. Mr. Sagana stated that the system at the Department of Labor was fixed to favor locals. The mediation hearing was like a scene from General Custer’s last stand where the locals were outnumbered.”

Well, don’t let me rock your world here, but our labor system is fixed to favor locals, but we aren’t doing anything to take advantage of it. And when you talk about the locals being outnumbered, you are whining about the people there not being able to hold their own amongst a group in mere conversation. If you really want to do something to stem the tide of contract workers, go to local employers, grab a bunch of applications, and go around the island getting our locals their jobs. It’s really that simple.

Some say that the reason that the foreigners are here is because there are too many jobs for the locals to fill by ourselves. Well, that’s a load of crap, and now some of the people who have lived and worked here for a while want to try to gain a form of citizenship. While I am not a fan of them gaining a blue passport, I think that it would be better if some of the islands’ brothers and sisters got off of their plus-sized posteriors and eliminate the need for off-island labor.

If we do, we could fight for our island rather than run off and cry to our legislators for support. It reeks of “We voted you in so help us out because we are too lazy to do anything about it ourselves.”

Honestly, sometimes I am embarrassed to live here when I hear the whiny wimps use their powers of pout to get what they want. A little hard work is all that we need to solve the “Dekada issue” and it would help us make real changes.

Believe me, I think that the Dekada movement is a sham. The people from the Philippines work their butts off overseas and send their money back to their families, but rather than work hard to make changes in their homeland, they would rather switch countries like professional athletes switch teams. Maybe our two cultures could stand to look inward to solve our problems.

Oh, and don’t get too high and mighty Mr. Aquino, because the local and Filipino cultures are a little closer than you might think. Take your last name for example. How many Chamorro chieftains carried the name Aquino? The reason why we have cars and condos instead of coconuts is because we have benefited from the cultural exchange that is every bit engraved into our history as the latte stones.

Pamlico Rios
San Roque