Here are a few photos from yesterday’s Dekada rally

Dekada is a group of alien workers in the CNMI

They are trying to get long-term residency rights here in the islands

as well as an increase in the minimum wage

which is currently $3.05 an hour

this man is wearing a picture of George Miller on the back of his shirt

George Miller has introduced a bill

- HR 5550, a/k/a The Human Dignity Act-

that would, among other things, raise the CNMI’s minimum wage

and make Federal immigration laws apply here

the CNMI is part of the U.S., but sets its own immigration and labor laws

and it’s created a very odd situation where the local economy

is entirely dependent on cheap foreign labor

and the cheap foreign labor wants more rights

you can see posters of George Miller and Nancy Pelosi here

Dekada is really heartened by the Democrats’ takeover of Congress

they think it portends very good things for alien workers

***

I’m working on an article about Dekada for Pacific Magazine

so I’m not going to say much more about the rally or the movement here

because I don’t want to end up stealing my own lines in the story

but I will say that it was pretty amazing to see

hundreds of people of all these different nationalities

- Chinese, Filipino, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Thai, for a start -

getting so excited about the American political process

in a place where even local people

- who are U.S. citizens -

are disenfranchised

and don’t have any Congressional representation

you could live in these island for a hundred years and they’d still be interesting

and that’s the truth

update: it turns out that the article is not going to run in Pacific Magazine. These things just happen sometimes. I’ve posted the article here, now, instead:

At sundown on January 5, 2007, in a parking lot between Saipan’s Federal building and the Jollibee fast food restaurant, a group of Chinese, Filipino, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi contract workers exuberantly celebrated the Democrats’ new majority in the U.S. Congress. People held signs that read “Green Card = Human Dignity” and “Green Card = Path To Political Rights”. They tacked pictures of U.S. Representative George Miller and newly-elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to their shirts. They carried American flags.“My dear friends, this is the moment we’ve been waiting for,” said the group’s emcee, a Filipino worker named Jerry Custodio “This is the end of our suffering. Let’s give George Miller a round of applause. Let’s give human dignity a round of applause. Let’s give the Democrats a round of applause.”And the group - none of whom voted for the Democrats because none is eligible to vote in the United States, at least not yet – cheered and cheered and cheered.The group is called Dekada. It is a coalition of several thousand nonresident workers (the term for guest workers in the CNMI) each of whom has lived and worked in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands for at least five years. Many members of the group have been in the CNMI for twenty years or more.The group was formed two years ago by Bonificio Sagana, a Filipino security guard who has worked in the CNMI for almost twenty years. Dekada’s mission is to try to raise the minimum wage, which has been $3.05 per hour since 1997. Dekada’s more important mission, says Sagana, is to try to change the CNMI’s immigration laws.

“We have learned to live on the minimum wage,” said Sagana. “What we want is to improve our immigration status.”

Though many U.S. laws apply in the CNMI, the CNMI currently controls its own immigration and labor laws. And under CNMI law, nonresident workers can remain in the Commonwealth only so long as they are employed. Nonresident workers are not eligible for green cards or permanent residency, and they are only allowed to enter into one-year employment contracts. CNMI law requires employers to advertise these jobs every year - and to hire any qualified resident workers who apply for the jobs.

It means that annually, nonresident workers risk losing their jobs and having to leave the islands they think of as home.

Dekada wants long-term nonresident workers to be granted permanent residency status, or to be able to enter into multi-year contracts, or to be allowed some measure of security in the islands that they have lived in for so much of their adult lives.

Over the last two years, Dekada has tried to work with the CNMI legislature to increase the minimum wage and to secure longer-term residency permits for Dekada members, but to no avail. In fact, while the CNMI legislature has not made any move toward raising the minimum wage, it is considering legislation that would further restrict the amount of time nonresident workers can stay in the CNMI.

More promisingly for Dekada, the U.S. Congress is working on its own CNMI-related legislation. At the time of writing, a bill that would raise the CNMI’s minimum wage to Federal levels has passed the House of Representatives (a similar bill is expected to pass the Senate soon).

This Federal bill doesn’t address nonresident workers’ immigration status, but Sagana is hopeful that another bill is in the works. “We believe that the Democrats, that’s the party that understands the situation of the guest workers in the CNMI. I think U.S. congress will help. We know they know what’s happening here.”

Meanwhile, as the January 5 rally came to a close just after 7pm, Jerry Custodio encouraged the people in attendance to march from the parking lot to a hotel about a half mile away where Deputy Assistant Secretary for Insular Affairs David Cohen was meeting with CNMI business leaders.

After some confusion about whether there would be water available for the marchers (there would), a long line of Saipan’s workers marched down the street carrying their signs and their flags and their pictures of George Miller and Nancy Pelosi, as Custodio called out over the loudspeaker system, “We will march to the Fiesta Resort and then we will march back. Please participate! Please participate! This is for us! It is good exercise! And we remind all our members: don’t litter.”