Viewpoints

[B][I]Second of a three-part series[/I][/B] [I]Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this submission, it is being published as a three-part series. The last part of the series will be published on Friday.[/I]

I write this with the belief that both proponents and opponents can and should freely express their opinions respectfully and with open minds. This allows the public an opportunity to make an informed decision based on healthy debate of the issues and facts surrounding the question of whether to keep or abolish Article 12.
[B] VIEWPOINT 2: We need Article 12 to protect the poor uneducated NMDs from being landless.[/B]

Although this viewpoint is inherently offensive in suggesting we are poor and uneducated, and therefore we should not be allowed to make our own personal decisions about our own land, it is important to address it. This viewpoint is important, because it’s one of those that plays to emotion more than reason. I too will play to your emotions, but I will use reason to show you the intrinsic flaws of this viewpoint. I will show you that the reasons given for protecting Article 12 are exactly the reasons we should eliminate it.

When Article 12 was introduced and accepted 25 years ago, we were a young, naïve government. My generation’s parents were lucky to have had a 6th grade education, and barely spoke or understood English (Japanese and Chamorro and Carolinian being the native tongues of their time). This is no reflection on our parents being uneducated by choice, but a reflection of the time our parents were living in. They survived World War II and were under Japanese rule, allowed only a limited education. As a people, we had never truly been given the opportunity to govern ourselves for literally centuries (under Spanish, German, and Japanese rule from the early 1500’s to the late 1900‘s).

For many of us, our generation is the first English speaking and higher education generation. Article 12 was important and the right thing to implement 25 years ago, because of the nature of the inexperience we had as a people governing ourselves. Those concerns and days are over now. We have had 25 years of experience, and know what it means to own land and to sell land. We know and appreciate the value of land, now probably more so because of the 25-year hold Article 12 has provided us. Our children are graduates from some of the best schools in the world—Stanford, Georgetown, MIT, to name a few. Our children and people of my generation are accomplished lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, accountants, policewo/men, and leaders in many fields and parts of our community. We have grown and accomplished tremendous milestones, exceeding average to being truly exceptional. No one can deny this.

Yes, there are poor and uneducated among us still, and as with every community this is a community problem and concern. It is real, and I acknowledge this completely. The error in the analysis is claiming that Article 12 helps to protect the few poor and uneducated NMDs. I take it a step further and will show you how Article 12 actually hurts most especially the poor and uneducated NMDs in the context of the Commonwealth today after 25 years of much needed but sufficient experience with Article 12.

Landlessness and poverty still occur with Article 12. I dare claim it is worse now than when we had the “economic boom” days of non-stop tourism and garment factories. At least during the “boom” period, NMDs were making hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars leasing their land. Article 12 did not hinder land value back then the way it does today. Today’s world economy is a completely different one, with free trade demolishing our garment industry and the weak world economy bringing less tourists. Nobody can deny this is a FACT. Yet there are still those considered poor, uneducated families who leased or sold their lands and have squandered all their money away without investing for their future. Article 12 throughout the years did not force the unwise to make wise decisions. We cannot legislate wise decisions. So should we continue to use these same reasons to keep Article 12 when the very harms that we are supposedly being protected from still occur under the Article 12 mandate?

We have read in the newspapers of young NMD couples with children and families who have invested their lifetime savings in a home, only to be foreclosed because of a job lost, austerity in government or medical needs and emergency. These owners may have had a chance of recovering their investments if the pool of buyers were opened without restrictions to NMDs only. They would have been able to receive some money to start a new life here, Hawaii, Guam, or someplace in the States. Instead, they are saddled with deficiencies that they cannot escape, short of declaring bankruptcy.

The irony of these foreclosed transactions is that only an NMD buyer could buy and own the foreclosed property. The foreclosed NMD owner still loses his land. So who is being protected in the land transactions under Article 12, the NMD buyer or the NMD seller? The NMD buyer is not going to give back the land to the NMD seller. The NMD buyer will probably turn around and lease the seller’s land to a non-NMD citizen. Is this process protecting all NMDs? Who is the NMD we are trying to protect under the guise of protecting our culture and land for all NMDs?

NMD sellers should be given the opportunity to get the maximum benefit for their land. The truth is that only the select few privileged NMDs benefit from Article 12, because they can purchase homes and land from desperate poor and possibly uneducated NMD landowners at ridiculous discounts, due to land value being so low because the market of buyers is, by law through Article 12, non-existent outside of NMD people. Furthermore, the buyer pool is even smaller than a puddle because not all NMDs can afford to buy land, so it again only benefits the select few and privileged NMDs. NMD sellers should have the opportunity and right to sell their land to whoever they want to regardless of NMD definitions—they should have the opportunity to get the most money for their land, especially if selling out of desperate measure to save themselves from bankruptcy, medical emergency costs, higher education costs, etc., for the betterment of their families. The FACT is in the end, that NMD is still going to be poor, possibly uneducated and now landless, but for way less money than what they could have had if not for the Article 12 restrictions.

The landowners that are being foreclosed by MIHA (now Northern Marianas Housing Corp.) might have had the opportunity to avoid the foreclosure process if Article 12 had not been the impediment. They would have been able to sell their property at a greater amount than the balance of the loan and the accrued interests if there had been a bigger pool of buyers. The Northern Marianas Housing Corp. is now saddled into paying off the federal government who were the lenders under a loan guaranteed program for low-income landowners. The program was made available to help NMDs build affordable housing for their families. The guaranteed loan was agreed to because of Article 12. If it wasn’t for Article 12, the loan program would have been administered independently by the federal government without the MIHA guarantee, and MIHA would have been in a better position to continue to help the homeless. Sadly, this was not possible because of Article 12. The same is true for the Veterans Loan Program. Our NMD veterans who want to come back and make this their home, cannot access a loan program that they are entitled to because of Article 12.

Again, who is Article 12 protecting in this case? Stop and think and look around.

[I]Joseph Ito Pangelinan describes himself as 50-percent Northern Marianas descent by true blood but 100-percent NMD by definition.[/I]