ISLAND VOICES
America complicit in islander suffering

By Melissa Arakawa, Melissa Kramer, Connie Liu, David Mayeda, Jaime Mitsuda, Galahad Quartero, Dawn Sueoka, Thomas Tsutsumoto, Kristina Woo and Dustin Yim
University of Hawai'i-Manoa students

Hawai'i has recently seen a substantial increase in immigration from sectors of Micronesia (Alice Keesing, "Pacific migrants run up hefty healthcare tab," March 2).

While it is true that higher proportions of these immigrants are migrating to Hawai'i with health problems, Keesing's article portrays Micronesian migrants as opportunists, stripping local residents of economic resources. This article does not explain to readers why some of these Pacific migrants have contracted serious ailments.

For instance, in the Marshall Islands, health problems were heavily induced by U.S. military expansion. Marshallese were forced off their lands and exposed to nuclear radiation as part of U.S. military testing.

They were from their home islands, where they did not have to depend on external help and where they ate a balanced diet of fresh foods. They were forced into a situation where they relied on imported, unfamiliar foods, resulting in nutritional deficiencies and imbalances. Such changes dramatically increased, for example, rates of diabetes.

Today, Marshallese survivors and their offspring suffer in exile as they are still affected by the radiation from atomic bomb testing. The article should have noted more extensively the legal and moral obligation of the United States.

The article characterizes Micronesian immigrants as being poverty-stricken, working low-skill, low-wage jobs, carrying diseases and draining the state's educational resources because they have a disproportionate number of children with weaker English skills. In fact, the article quotes Gov. Cayetano, who reportedly wrote, "We have had to absorb this loss as best we could, at a terrible cost to our own children."

Highlighting such statements outside of their proper global context distinguishes Micronesian immigrants as "burdens" whom we should "reluctantly" assist, without even acknowledging their extreme levels of victimization at the hands of the United States. These messages turn Pacific Island migrants into political scapegoats.

Our local media should be conscious of U.S. complicity in creating these circumstances, rather than helping mold attitudes that blame victims.