Revise pact with Pacific islanders

Hawaii taxpayers have been laden with the school and medical bills for Pacific island migrants who are allowed to move to the United States without a visa or work authorization, the result of an unfunded U.S. federal mandate. A new report by the investigative arm of Congress suggests that increasing federal grants to Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau to improve education and health care could reduce the migration. This might be wishful thinking — but it is a viable piece of a complex puzzle toward raising pact islanders’ standards of living back home while negotiations move toward tighter migration requirements.

In return for nuclear weapons testing on the islands and other military involvement, the U.S. agreed to the 1986 visa-free pact with education and health care for inhabitants of Pacific island nations to reduce costs for those needs. As a result, more than 56,000 Micronesian, Marshallese and — since being part of the pact in 1994 — Palauan citizens now live in parts of the United States.

They amount to 25 percent of all three nations’ population, including 18,000 in Guam and 12,000 in Hawaii, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

As those numbers have been swelling, federal expenditures to help states pay for education and health care have dwindled. Spending by those categories with Hawaii state tax revenues has escalated from $32 million in 2002 to $115 million last year. Only a woeful $11 million comes from the federal government annually to help the state.

David Gootnick, director of international affairs and trade at GAO and author of the new report, said more U.S. help for education and health care for signatories to the 1986 pact "might reduce the migration pressure, reduce the need to migrate."

He added that improved health care and education in pact islands could better prepare citizens to eventually live in the U.S.

"There are opportunities before individuals migrate to enhance their ability to be competitive in the job market," Gootnick said.

In these native islands, though — where economies range from fishing to subsistence farming, to government and fledgling tourism — employment buildup would require much help. The Micronesians, Marshallese and Palauans, like people elsewhere in the planet, 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.

Hawaii’s congressional delegation and other members of Congress asked the Obama administration in May to make potential emigrants from pact nations understand that the purpose of entry to the U.S. "is primarily intended to provide educational and employment opportunities" so they can return to their islands with skill and experience.

More effective would be the legislators’ suggestion that "bilateral meetings consider screening measures that could be implemented" by the pact nations "to reduce the rate of persons who are likely to develop an overreliance on social services."

Indeed, the GAO report cites a Census survey in 2003 finding that only 10 percent of the migrants from pact nations cited medical reasons for coming to Hawaii. Not surprisingly, the survey indicated employment was a major reason for making the move.

Helping the pact nations provide adequate education and medical care for their citizens back home would be a worthwhile undertaking, but the open-door U.S. visa opportunity should be phased out or more tightly controlled. Meanwhile, Hawaii and other states need more help from the federal government to pay for education and health care that were promised to pact nation citizens, with visa in hand.