Stayman: Not a friend of the CNMI

Recent articles appearing in the Marianas Variety have cast again the ugly shadow of colonialism over the Commonwealth, and confirmed the agenda Mr. Allen Stayman has carried for at least a decade in every job he’s held for the federal government.

More striking than a colonialist like Allen Stayman knowing what’s better for us than we would, the Marianas Variety remains complicit in continuing to hold Stayman up as the official authority on the CNMI.

The Variety ran stories on Stayman’s political opinions on Jan. 18, 24 and 26, where they allowed him to morph—again—into the self-professed expert on why our tourism industry suffers (poor immigration policies), why the CNMI will now suffer in Washington, D.C. on issues (as a result of trying to protect itself from the likes of Stayman’s and others’ attempts to federalize immigration authority), and labor abuse, complete with prostitution, as a result of, you guessed it, local control of immigration.

Stayman came all the way to Saipan, as if anyone wanted to see him, to attend the recent inaugural events. He crashed the Saipan Chamber’s installation dinner, and worked his way back onto the Variety’s front pages to do what he came out here to do. Quote Stayman: “I am one who believes that many of the CNMI’s economic problems are a result of local immigration control and that an appropriately designed federal law is part of the solution.”

Why doesn’t the Variety ask those in power, the Republicans, for their opinions—not bitter failed leaders who still want to say “I told you so” about the CNMI, which they are working to do, and kill in the infancy of the Fitial administration.

Stayman will say anything, and do anything, to continue his onslaught, most recently through the Jack Abramoff scandal. His predictions would come true this way, and he would fulfill his all-consuming sickness and obsession aimed at destroying our autonomy. The definition of a true colonialist.

Let me read you something from 1999 from the Washington Times:

It is hard to imagine that a miniscule chain of islands in the Pacific could get Washington so tied in knots, but here it is. On Capitol Hill, charges are flying that administration officials have broken the law to wreak vengeance on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a very far-flung part of the United States, and on Republicans in Congress who have shown sympathy for its fate. This is politics as petty as it gets.

The actual issue is the regulation of minimum wage and immigration law in the Marianas. A thriving textile industry has sprung up there, primarily because the Covenant of 1975 between the Marianas and the United States allows the islands to control both items within their own borders. This means relatively cheap garments carrying the coveted “Made in the USA” label, produced at a minimum wage of $3.05 per hour by Chinese and Philippine guest workers, which is actually lavish wages by Asian standards. For the Marianas, the garment industry has been a lifesaver as tourism has been decimated by the Asian financial crises. Equally, it means less dependence on welfare handouts from Washington. For the labor unions in the continental United States, and their friends in the Democratic Party, however, the Marianas textile industry represents a threat that must be stamped out.

The Clinton Interior Department has for years been targeting the Marianas, particularly under Allen P. Stayman, former director of the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior.

Of particular interest has been the activities of the said Mr. Stayman and of the Interior Department Policy Director David North, who lost his job just recently, after his computer’s hard drive was subpoenaed by the House Committee for its probe. Needless to say, it is both highly unethical and illegal for public employees to engage in partisan politics, possibly a violation of the Hatch Act, the Anti-Federal Lobbying Act or the Privacy Act.

Is that from 1997, or 1999, or 2006?

Stayman was forced out of the State Department after leaving a scandal at DOI. He sent, at federal taxpayer expense, unannounced investigators to produce pre-scripted copy for reports on the CNMI, hired the disgraced David North who was “retired” by his superiors, and he, himself, barely survived his own subpoena by hiring the famous Plato Chacharris before the House Resources Committee.

After being fired from the executive side of government, Stayman has now sneaked into the back door at the U.S. Senate Energy Committee a year or so ago, his status shackled by his legacy and his minority staffer status. His legacy?

His legacy is his goal: to federalize CNMI immigration authority. Poor Allen, and his liberal Democratic allies in DC (like George Miller), who did all they could to undermine the CNMI economy during his years as Director of OIA. So bitter, and now smelling blood with the Abramoff scandal.

The OIA, in the ’90s, had been engaged in virtually open warfare with the CNMI because of Allen Stayman and his allies, and he is not about to stop, no matter where he works.

He openly stated that when Gov. Froilan Tenorio negated the minimum wage rate hike and temporarily lifted the cap on Saipan garment factories, he became locked on a federal takeover forever.

Quoted in a 1999 Roll Call newspaper, “Allen Stayman, the former director of the Office of Insular Affairs at Interior, sent a memo in October 1997 to then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Matt Angle suggesting Democrats “repudiate” Froilan Tenorio, the Democratic governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

“Largely out of sight, there is a nominal Democrat, a Governor running for reelection, who scorns our President, who is playing footsie with the Republican House leadership, and who should be repudiated—in writing—by the nation’s Democrats,” Stayman wrote.

Stayman, who now works for the State Department, went on to suggest that the Democratic National Committee “should repudiate these scoundrels,” referring to Tenorio and other CNMI officials.

Everyone remembers the rest. Federal takeover legislation, class action lawsuits, national and international media releases on the events and fabric of the CNMI. The whole disgusting conspiracy.

Despite tremendous progress in the past years in addressing local problems and improving federal relations, he will not relent.

Know Allen Stayman for who he is, and for what he is not. Neither one is a friend of the CNMI.

Allen Degone
As Mahetog, Saipan