Marshallese exodus to Arkansas intrigues doctorate candidate By Mark Rabago Associate Editor A geography doctorate candidate from the University of Syracuse in currently on island to study the history of asylum processes in Micronesia and serve as a research assistant to former Northern Marianas College instructor Sam McPhetres Sr. However, what really piques Emily Eaton’s interest these days is studying how a number of people from the Marshall Islands have come to migrate and settle in a small town in Arkansas. Eaton, who was the Rotary Club of Saipan’s guest speaker last week during its weekly meeting at the Hyatt Regency Saipan, said she learned about the steady migration of Marshallese to Northwest Arkansas, specifically to Springdale, after working on a dissertation that focused on the brief history of the development of the Compact of Free Association. The compact sets the terms of sovereignty and independence for the Trust Territory and eventually gave birth to island nations like the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau. “The Compact of Free Association contains a lot of provisions on citizenship and migration. One of those provisions is that member Compact states like Marshall Islands can travel freely to any part of the 50 U.S. states without a visa. So for an immigration students this is incredibly interesting because this is the only case that exists in U.S. immigration law.” Eaton says that Springdale has one of the largest population of Marshallese in the U.S., second only to Hawaii. “So how do you have maybe 8,000 Marshallese ending up in a town of 60,000 in Arkansans? This is one of the driving questions of my research. Historically how did that come into being? It seems anomalous. So I was able to spend some time there just before coming to Saipan to do some interviews. There is a consul of the Marshall Islands in Arkansas, one of only two or three in the U.S. mainland.” The large number of Marshallese going to Arkansas, she said, has also dumbfounded U.S. Customs and Border agents who can’t figure out why Marshallese don’t need to have their passports stamped when they come into the country. “I’m also trying to figure out what Marshallese people are doing in [Arkansas]. Are they here to stay? Are they going back and forth? They are primarily [going there] to stay I think partly due to the physical distance and for economic reasons. They are primarily working on the poultry industry, for Tyson Foods, which has a plant there.” Geography lesson Eaton also told members of the local Rotary Club that outside of military folk, U.S. mainlanders’ knowledge about America’s overseas territories, particularly Guam and the CNMI, is next to nil. “As a graduate student at the department, I have the pleasure to be a teaching assistant and I get to teach 75 freshmen every fall to talk about physical and human geography. So I always make it an effort now to work at least one or two lectures about the U.S. territories in the Pacific. I do this for a number of reasons. The main reason is most of my students absolutely have no idea where Saipan is or have no idea where Guam is. They may have heard of them. Being a beneficiary of the New York Public School System myself, I know they have very little content, if anything, on these areas.” To be honest, Eaton said, she had very little knowledge of the islands’ history before coming here a couple of years ago. “We also have a discussion on what the U.S. presence is out here. I think that’s very important for students in the mainland to understand that the geography of the U.S. nation, the U.S. empire, the establishment of military bases here and that there’s been a long-term relationship between these islands and the United States. So I’m working on my classes to somehow counter some of the ignorance that I’m finding.”
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 22:00:01 +0000
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