Comment Submitted by Richard T. Smith

Hundreds of investors will be left out by the proposed rule-making. Investors who have built the CNMI are being shown the door after investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the local economy. This is an extreme betrayal of those who invested in our struggling economy to make it a first class tourist destination. For most in the tourism industry, these are people who played by the rules, and now suddenly --a pogrom against them, the hard working community building foreign investors, is taking place. The Commonwealth will suffer a further fall in quality of life, and accessibility to goods that mainland Americans take for granted. The farms and “mom and pop stores” of foreign investors literally put food on the table for tens of thousands of American citizens. They build our homes, our schools, and provide jobs to local residents. They bring in the tourists, they pay local government taxes, and they pay federal excise taxes and “user-fees.” If the U.S. government’s goal is to cut to ribbons our economy, then this will do it. Twenty percent of the population is already on public assistance, and if these foreign investors, take their investments with them, the CNMI will turn into a wasteland. Few American companies have been willing to invest here over the last 33 years of the Commonwealth. In the current lasting slump, mainland money is most unlikely to be willing to start investing in these islands now. Bona fide investors with over $100K in assets and a going concern should be allowed at least 10 years to run their businesses and to dispose of their property in better economic times. Depriving them of their property goes against everything that the American Dream, and “making it in America” stands for. A decent government would at least grant them an orderly departure, with a period to train new owners, or liquidate these existing concerns. Will the United States repeat the mistakes of Robert Mugabe, and throw out the people who most contribute to the economy? And in exchange, force our citizens to live in deeper depravation and poverty?