Even though the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) are thousands of miles from the U.S. mainland, you need to know what is happening there. There are tens of thousands of guest workers from the Philippines, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Russia, Pakistan, Thailand, and other Asian countries who went to the CNMI thinking it was the USA; looking to fill the American dream. Too many found a nightmare. Workers have fallen victim to labor and human rights abuses including unpaid wages, indentured servitude, housing violations, contract violations, and discrimination. They suffered from criminal acts such as rape, torture, false imprisonment, assault and battery, murder, and non-prosecuted criminal cases. They fell victim to human rights abuses such as forced abortion, human trafficking, and forced prostitution.
The CNMI maintains local control of labor and immigration. The current CNMI government policies make a mockery of democracy where the majority should be represented. In the CNMI the guest workers pay taxes, but they cannot vote. They are victims of crimes and can be arrested, but they cannot serve on juries. They are the voiceless majority of indentured servants on U.S. soil. They have no political rights or voice in the community that they helped to build. The last time guest workers with no voting privileges or political rights outnumbered citizens on U.S. soil it was called slavery.
This November 2007, the CNMI Governor Beningo Fitial signed an even more oppressive CNMI labor law. Read about it here, here, and here.
Disenfranchised guest workers and their U.S. citizen children have an unstable status and live in fear of exile. At any time nonresident workers can be terminated or not have their contracts renewed. Their U.S. citizen children will be forced to return with them to their home countries. Their children do not want to leave the CNMI where they have lived all of their lives. Like their parents, they consider the CNMI as their home. Many school age children can read, write, and speak only English, and do not know the languages of their homelands. If exiled with their parents, they will be deprived of the best education, health care, and nutrition. The parents migrated to the CNMI because there are few jobs in their home countries. If forced to return to their homelands, it is not likely that they will be able to find employment to support their families. You can hear the voices of the U.S. citizen children and their foreign contract worker parents here.
photo by Itos Feliciano ©2007
The guest workers in the CNMI were recruited legally to work on U.S. soil. Many of the guest workers have lived and worked in the CNMI for 5, 10, 20, 30 or more years. Even though the guest workers were never promised a pathway to citizenship when they began their employment in the CNMI, they certainly have earned one. Few of them suspected when they left their homelands that they would be asked to renew their contracts year, after year, after year. Their valuable skills were essential to the CNMI economy, and most were invited to stay. When they left their home countries to work in the CNMI, the guest workers did not expect that their stay would be extended to the point that they would sacrifice the most productive years of their lives working in a foreign land. These hard-working people are responsible for taking the CNMI from an island with few businesses and a limited economy, to an “economic miracle” as described by CNMI-hired lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and his friends in the CNMI and in the U.S. Congress. archipelago taxis hotels shopping golf tennis snorkeling diving hiking parasailing managaha
photo by Itos Feliciano ©2007
The guest workers have not just sacrificed their sweat and tears to build an island nation, but have contributed in other significant ways to the betterment of the community in which they live. Some of their U.S. citizen children are serving the United States as members of the armed Forces in Iraq. They deserve a means of becoming permanent members of the community that they helped to build. Workers should not be treated like commodities, like coconuts that can be consumed, tossed aside, and replaced with a new one. Federalization and status for long-term guest workers is not just a political issue; it is a moral issue of conscience. sai
Background Information on the Situation of the Guest Workers in the CNMI
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