Public financial problems were created by the Pacific islands’ federally unfunded benefit mandate that afffects Hawaii — $115 million last year — and Guam, pursuant to the free association treaty between the federal government and three island entities: the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and the Palau Islands.

This agreement has caused some 25 percent of the people of these islands to emigrate to Hawaii and Guam. The U.S. helps Hawaii absorb the cost of benefits to these immigrants with a miserly $11 million, leaving Hawaii to pay more than $100 million this past year, up from $32 million in 2002. Guam’s citizens have similar problems, as do other states to which the islanders migrate.

But wait! There is a clue in your recent editorial on how to respond to this problem ("Revise pact with Pacific islanders," Star-Advertiser, Our View, Nov. 16).

You note that these islanders are "like people elsewhere on the planet; (they) are tempted to move to America because of its more advanced standard of living. To Pacific islanders, free education and medical care are fantastic extras."

So, the answer is to create jobs and an economy in the islands that will keep the islanders from migrating. How? In the same way Peter Wilson’s company established a tuna industry from scratch in the remote Indian Ocean Maldive islands — by using experienced industry personnel to plan, build and train the locals how to operate the industry professionally. The Maldive operation is profitably plugging along today under island leadership.

Today these three Pacific island groups are the home of the largest tuna resource in the world, valued at $4 billion a year, as foreign purse seiners haul thousands of tons of tuna to more than 20 canneries in Thailand, 12 in Korea and others in Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. All that these foreign fishing and canning companies pay is a small license fee to local island governments.

In the past, Pacific islanders have tried to establish their own tuna industries, but all have failed due to inexperienced planning and management. This could be resolved by using experienced industry personnel to prepare a detailed tuna industry development plan that would acquire the necessary funding for the project from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and other financing institutions.

What’s also needed is the support of Hawaii’s elected and financial leaders. Failure to take positive action to create local island industries will leave the door open for foreign companies to establish their own industries and, in so doing, prevent any real development by the island nations themselves.

A minimum of federal grant funds devoted to the creation of a Pacific islands regional tuna development plan would lead to a positive long-term financial result for both central Pacific islanders and the U.S. It is the kind of investment that creates jobs in private industry for the long term, rather than fostering reliance on welfare-type benefits and limited-length government jobs.