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What’s Article 12 got to do with it?
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Posted on Jan 26 2012
Efrain Camacho writes that Article 12 is somehow causing foreclosures in the CNMI. People borrowed money and couldn’t make the payments—what does Article 12 have to do with that? The U.S. mainland has many more foreclosures per capita than the CNMI, and as we all know, there is no Article 12 in the mainland.
There were 4 million foreclosures in the U.S. mainland in 2011, and millions more foreclosures elsewhere in the world, as working people had trouble paying their mortgages. Anywhere in the world, except maybe Efrain’s fantasy world, anyone who doesn’t pay back their mortgage has to give up their house, with or without Article 12.
Efrain claims that “there are only a few NMDs with means to buy land,” but if only NMDs can buy and sell land, then how could NMDs be unable to buy land? This also doesn’t make sense. On the other hand, if anyone and everyone is invited to buy land in the CNMI, then there truly will be outsiders pricing NMDs out of the market.
Efrain says that Article 12 is hurting NMDs. Maybe it’s hurting a few privileged NMDs who want to do business with real estate developers. But Article 12 is not for those privileged few, but for the majority of NMDs who want to live on their own land, and not become renting tenants on their own island.
We get it. Real estate developers would have an easier time selling vacation homes in the CNMI if we didn’t have Article 12. But the laws of the CNMI are here to protect us, the people of the CNMI, and not a few real estate developers. We need our island to live on, not for outsiders’ vacation homes. Trying to somehow connect unfortunate foreclosures with Article 12 won’t change that.
[B]Diego C. Blanco[/B] [I]As Lito, Saipan[/I]
