I’m aghast Guam’s delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives – James “Jim” Moylan – is pushing through one of the most racist proposals by the island I have ever seen. His House Resolution 6273 will, among other things: 1) send Micronesian immigrants convicted of local crimes into the federal prison system, and 2) require that future immigrants from the freely associated states of Micronesia provide proof of employment and housing on Guam.
The underbelly of this proposal is the demagoguery that Chuukese, Palauan, Pohnpeian, Yapese, and Marshallese people are burdens beyond our patience, and the root of the crime problem. Like the racism of the Chamorro Land Trust Act and the Chamorro Registry of the so-called decolonization effort, Mr. Moylan gives this effort a moral qualifier. In this case, it is that national action must be taken to save the local people from the perceived destruction of the U.S.’s immigration policy stemming from the Compacts of Free Association.
He is blaming crime and economic stagnation – decades-long failures of the society and government of Guam – on one group of people. Without considering very important facts, i.e.: Chamorro men, by far, commit the greatest numbers of violent and drug crimes, and are the least likely to want to work in the jobs FAS immigrants gladly take.
Aside from the bill’s latent racism, it is the epitome of the sorry excuse Guam’s politicians have made for their failures to address the problems Mr. Moylan hopes to blame on our brothers and sisters of Micronesia.
I say a lot more about this in today’s Troy Talks:
