Good luck and get out

Dear people of the CNMI: I have read the text of Ms. Lazaro’s speech, the so-named champion of the 30th Attorney General’s Cup Speech Competition on Friday on Tinian. I am disturbed by her proselytizing tone that the CNMI people and in most cases the U.S. federal government, through their laws, have been inhumane in most of the laws they have enacted regarding immigration in the mainland and in the Commonwealth (see Saipan Tribune, page 11, Tuesday May 6, 2014, “Nothing human is alien to me”)

Her simplistic views that our local/U.S. law as they apply to CW workers in the CNMI is flawed and do not treat aliens (outsiders) as humans are unjustified. It is through some parts of the U.S. immigration law the afforded her her status as an American citizen, although her parents were only invited here for work, with a contract for certain periods, with no promise of enhanced favorable pathways to U.S. citizenship. Her parents were paid airfare, housing, decent wages and other benefits for their work services through local and U.S. laws. These foreign workers (CW) were allowed to continue their stay in the CNMI anywhere from five to 20 years or longer, while they continue to have babies who are automatic U.S. citizens (Ms. Lazaro included).

Even with all these perks and benefits, alien CW workers, with the assistance of Delegate Kilili who continually advocate for an enhanced pathway to circumvent immigration laws, continue to ask our local leaders for CW extension for five years and the granting of special privileges (CNMI only) of immediate enhanced rights to stay and continue working toward attaining U.S. citizenship. To Ms. Lazaro, this in not humane. Even for their benefit, current immigration laws should not be amended to provide for their wellbeing and to enhance their final goal of citizenship.

She asserted that the U.S. immigration system is so broken that former mayor Bloomberg of New York has criticized it as national suicide. My rebuttal to her and Bloomberg is to remind her that our congressional leaders have constantly reminded us that they are not ready to introduce legislation to address changes to immigration laws unless and until border protection is strictly enforced to curtail continued illegal crossings from Mexico and elsewhere.

I am certain the Ms. Lazaro has done her research, but I will not leave my island’s (this is not her island, as she opined) future and political and traditional values to a non-NMD alien Filipina’s idea of what is wrong or right or human. Good luck to her and her parents but be prepared to leave and go back to your real island, the Philippines.

Brothers and sisters, Chamorros, Carolinians and fellow CNMI citizens, let us stand up and be prepared to defend of island traditions, culture, and values and a future of our own making. I know we can make it as in the past, in the present and even in the future.

JD Camacho
via snail mail