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Update: IGIA meeting hears from Gov Lolo on influx of Chinese into territory

Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga told a meeting of federal and territorial leaders that American Samoans are “enticing” Chinese people with money into the territory, due to the fact that local residents “need to survive and live” and despite residents having a hard time dealing with the Chinese in the Territory.

 

Lolo made the comment as part of his closing remarks at yesterday’s annual meeting in Washington D.C. of the Interagency Group on Insular Areas (IGIA), to discuss issues of critical importance to leaders of American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 

“We have a hard time dealing with the Chinese back home, but we can’t help it. People need to survive and live,” he said. “That’s why people are beginning to entice Chinese people with money in their pockets, just to pick up the daily requirements of living.”

 

The governor didn’t elaborate further on the “daily requirements of living” in his brief comments dealing with Chinese people with money. However, it's a well known fact that many local businesses in the territory are operated and managed by Asians, referred to by local residents as Chinese owned and operated businesses.

 

Samoa News should also point out that it has been unable to determine whether the ethnic Chinese, referred to by the governor and members of the Samoan community, are from China or Taiwan.

 

The governor’s remarks came just 24-hours after the Attorney General’s Office charged in District Court an Asian business owner on allegations that he tried to bribe Tax Office agents last year.

 

As part of his closing remarks, Lolo said he thinks the common interest of all the territories is to make sure that “we are economically sustainable and are able to stand on [our] own two feet” and he added that the territories appreciate the Interior Department’s help in every way.

 

“We do understand the toughness and the seriousness of the budget these days,” said Lolo, referring to the federal budget, “but at the same time, we need some recognition and we... do feel that we deserve much better than what we have today.”

 

He also says that for the “first time, American Samoa has been fairly recognized since the beginning of time” when Interior Assistant Secretary of Insular Areas, Esther Kia’aina visited the territory last year. Furthermore, the “spirit of patriotism in our territory has been great since 1900”, when the U.S. Navy and President McKinley “tried to Americanize Samoans to be Americans.”

 

And since then, “our forefathers went into negotiations and we freely gave up the sovereignty of our small island nation at the time, just to be Americans,” he told the gathering. “Today, we are facing a lot of problems. We are under the mercy of the federal government in terms of their mandates and we hope that after the [IGIA] meeting, some of those mandates and regulations will be relaxed so that we can be able to, at least, try to develop our economy to come close to where everybody is at today.”

 

He thanked Kia’aina, who facilitated the meeting, for her visit to American Samoa, saying that it “ makes a big difference to our people, and it rekindles the spirit of patriotism as Americans in the South Pacific”.

 

In response, Kia’aina said that the visit was “meaningful for me, not just in my professional capacity, but in my personal capacity to be a Polynesian woman, and to visit a territory that is Polynesian in culture.”

 

“All the history behind our people, we are all one people,” she said, and expressed appreciation to the governor and his wife as well as the cabinet directors for ensuring that she fully understood the needs of American Samoa.

 

Guam Gov. Edward J. Baza Calvo recalled Lolo’s comments dealing with federal issues. He said that some of the “issues that we have, whether it is from the Caribbean or the Western Pacific... the symptoms are all the same” when it comes to either federal mandates or regulatory actions or even treaties which at times do not encompass the territories.

 

VOTING RIGHTS

 

As part of her closing remarks, Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo raised the issue of Delegates from the Territories not having a full voting right on the House floor, when it comes to final decisions on legislation.

 

“As Delegates to the U.S. Congress, I hope someday we will be able to get full voting rights and be able to vote for final passage [of bills] on the floor,” she said. “I think if we do, there would be more emphasis and interest in the territories and we would be in a better position to bargain for our challenges and so forth.”

 

As a non voting Delegate — who is allowed to vote in committee and participate in committee — she said, “we just do not have that interest from a lot of the other colleagues. They know we cannot vote [on the floor]." She said she hopes that some day — maybe not in her lifetime — that other congressional colleagues “realize that we are important.”

 

Bordallo revealed that there are people working on this issue of getting delegates full voting rights — such as one of her former employees, who is trying to get it through the federal courts — “to see if we can accomplish this. I think we will have much more importance if we can get it through.”

 

The IGIA meeting was streamed live online. See elsewhere in today’s edition for other issues from IGIA pertaining to American Samoa.