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Looking for FSM & RMI Communities in the US

FSM and the Republic of the Marshalls are gearing up for a survey of migrants in the US and its territories (meaning Guam and CNMI). This is going to be important for people from FSM and RMI if they hope to retain the rights to open migration that was guaranteed in the Compact. Recently, as you know, there has been some concern in Washington about the burden that migrants from the islands have been placing on some of the states and territories–especially Guam, Hawaii and Arkansas.

An amphibious Air Micronesia plane on the Pohnpei runway in 1969.

How can migrant Micronesian communities build on their successes?

First, continue to do what most migrant communities in the US seem to be doing so successfully. Develop an island community within the larger American community–not to exclude ties with other people in town but to offer support to one another. I’ve attended birthday celebrations or christening parties that bring together nearly all the islanders in a place, and there are holiday picnics with sports events that draw islanders from hundreds of miles around. Most successful communities have an authority figure of some kind to keep everyone in line and to introduce new migrant families to the community and explain what they have to do to get along in their new home.

Oceanside, New York, where I’m temporarily working in St. Anthony’s Parish

Right now the answer to the question posed in the title of this posting is Oceanside, New York, where I’m temporarily working in St. Anthony’s Parish. The people here are largely from New York City, most of them of Italian descent and some of them experiencing the financial problems that other Americans are facing these days in a time of almost-recession.

In many ways, the people of Oceanside are not very different from the Micronesians who have come to the US to seek what they could not find in their own country–a job that offers a decent salary, a good education for their kids, a new opportunity in a new place. Some of them can remember their grandparents telling them about what they had to go through when they first arrived in the US. “Italians belong in Italy,” seemed to be the cry at that time. “Irish belong in Ireland. Poles belong in Poland. America is for Americans.”

Francis X. Hezel, SJ, is a Jesuit priest who has lived and worked in Micronesia since 1963. At different times he has served as high school teacher, school administrator, pastor, and regional superior to the Jesuits of Micronesia. He spent thirty years directing the Micronesian Seminar, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Pohnpei, Micronesia.

He has written and spoken widely about social change and its impact on island societies. He has also written several books on Micronesian history, including The First Taint of Civilization, Strangers in Their Own Land, and The New Shape of Old Island Cultures. His most recent book, Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture, is available through University of Hawaii Press.