Civic Engagement, Immigration Policy

Petition in Support of Improved Status for the Foreign Workers of the CNMI (December 2013)

Written on December 5, 2013, in response to the NMD Corp's petition against improved status for CNMI foreign workers, which had garnered over 2,500 signatures.

By Kelvin Rodeo  |  Published December 5, 2013

📌 Key Context: This petition is addressed to the 113th U.S. Congress and was written as a direct response to organized opposition to improved status for long-term foreign workers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

Petition to the One Hundred Thirteenth United States Congress

Petition to the One Hundred Thirteenth United States Congress in Support of Granting U.S. Permanent Residence and a Pathway to U.S. Citizenship to the Long-term Nonresident Workers of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands:

In 1983, the Third Northern Marianas Commonwealth Legislature passed the Nonresident Workers Act, which was then signed into law as PL 03-66. Its main purpose was "to establish procedures and requirements for the hiring of nonresident workers," and in Section 2 of the Act it states that the "Legislature recognizes the need for alien labor at the present state of economic development but finds that the employment of nonresident workers should be temporary and generally limited to the duration of the specific job or employment for which the alien was recruited."

Despite this, after opening the floodgates for alien workers to come pouring into the CNMI as part of our guest worker program, we never closed them; instead, we continued to welcome newcomers with open arms and we allowed those already here to continue to stay, because we understood their priceless value to us and to our islands.

Over the past few decades, we have seen them take care of our children, build our roads, our offices, and our schools, collect our garbage, drive our buses, greet us at hotels, clean our hotel rooms, cook our meals, serve us at restaurants, establish new businesses, work our garment factories, fix our vehicles, our computers, and our phones, and many other jobs across all other fields of work in the private sector. Many of them have been in our islands for so long that we have seen them move around to different lines of work while they've been here.

This encouraged many CNMI residents over the years to aspire for government jobs over trying for the private sector, and now the unemployment figures for CNMI residents seem to be at the highest in our history. Furthermore, the local indigenous population of CNMI residents is now outnumbered and many are currently directing their anger at the very people who have built and sustained our local economy over the years.

⚠️ Warning: The petition warns that scapegoating nonresident workers for unemployment and cultural change ignores deeper structural and historical causes.

They would like you to believe that these nonresident workers are a nuisance and a threat to our people, but this is not the case. They would like to place the blame for the high resident unemployment solely on the nonresident workers, but this is not the case. They would like you to believe that granting U.S. permanent residency to all these people will severely affect our local culture and society in a negative manner, but this is not the case. They would have you believe that the nonresident workers are the reason that our local indigenous culture is dying out, but this is not the case.

How the Petition Describes Nonresident Workers

We, the undersigned, see these nonresident workers not as a nuisance or a threat to us, but as our brothers and sisters, who came here in search of a better life, pursuing the "American Dream." We are sincerely grateful to them for their essential role in building and sustaining our local economy over the years and for developing much of the infrastructure in our islands.

We, the undersigned, know that the real blame when it comes to the high unemployment rate among CNMI residents lies on us, the residents of the CNMI, for allowing such a system of hiring nonresident workers to continue for so long. However, we also understand that they have been here for many years, and they, like us, also consider these islands their home. These people are our friends, our co-workers, our mothers, our fathers, our cousins, our aunts, our uncles, our in-laws; we do not wish to see them depart from the CNMI.

We, the undersigned, know that it is not their fault that our local indigenous culture is dying out; rather, again, we understand that the blame lies on us. It was we who, knowing that there were so many foreign cultures being introduced to our people as these nonresident workers came into our islands, chose not to reinforce our cultural values and identity to our children.

We chose to become a member of the American political family and we opened our borders to foreign nationals so that they could come live and work here. Now that the CNMI has followed in the footsteps of the United States of America, having become a nation of immigrants, a small minority among CNMI residents wants to blame the nonresident workers for the decline of our unique cultural identity, but we know that the nonresident workers are not to blame for this.

We, the undersigned, love, appreciate, and value our population of nonresident workers.

Historical Parallel: The Chinese Exclusion Act

What the people fail to understand in their opposition of granting improved status to our long-term nonresident worker population is the shameful historic parallel to the circumstances surrounding the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. When the gold was abundant in California, the Chinese laborers who immigrated to California were well-received, but when the gold started to become scarce and the Chinese laborers moved into the cities to find other work, many citizens in California turned against the Chinese laborers and blamed them for the low wages and unemployment, and this ultimately led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

💡 Pro Tip: The petition uses this historical comparison to argue that economic downturns often trigger unfair anti-immigrant rhetoric and discriminatory policy.

In a similar vein, the nonresident workers in the CNMI were well-received when they first came and business was booming for the garment factories, but when our garment factories closed down and our economy started to plummet, many of the nonresident workers found other jobs and kept working in our islands. It was only at this time, during our economic downturn, that the current anti-immigrant rhetoric began, blaming the nonresident workers for there not being any jobs for CNMI residents.

We seek to avoid a repeat of what happened when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. Not only will the sudden departure of our nonresident workers severely affect our economy in a negative manner, but it will also tear families apart or otherwise place difficult decisions on members of many families to either stay in the only home they have ever known or to follow their parents back to the country they came from all those years ago.

Families, Community, and Equal Status

The opposition to granting these long-term nonresident workers U.S. permanent residency with a pathway to U.S. citizenship is an outrageous affront to our many brothers and sisters who have been living and working in our Commonwealth for all this time, many of them choosing to stay even after suffering abuses from their employers over the years. Many of them have started families since they arrived in our islands, and their children grew up alongside our own.

The CNMI has grown into a very diverse melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, but it seems like those who are opposed to granting an improved status to these nonresident workers want this place to be strictly Chamorro and Carolinian, virtually reversing any progress our society has made in the past few decades as a Commonwealth in political union with the United States.

We, the undersigned, in the interest of achieving true progress in our islands and not repeating the mistakes of the past, do hereby respectfully request the members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate to grant U.S. permanent residency and a pathway to U.S. citizenship to the long-term nonresident workers who have lived in the CNMI since or prior to November 28, 2009, the date when the U.S. federal government officially took control over CNMI immigration.

Closing Appeal to the 113th U.S. Congress

We wholeheartedly feel that these legal, long-term, hard-working nonresident workers deserve nothing less for all of their contributions to our Commonwealth over the years and would like to finally see them as our equals in society, afforded all the same rights and securities that we currently enjoy.

📌 Key Takeaway: The petition calls for U.S. permanent residence and a pathway to citizenship for long-term nonresident workers in the CNMI, emphasizing fairness, historical lessons, family unity, and recognition of decades of economic and social contribution.