Guam Deserves a New Status

Support for granting Guam’s desire for commonwealth status is growing in Washington, a welcome if belated response to the long campaign of the Guam people. “We know that we cannot become a state at this time, but we no longer want to be a colony,” the governor of Guam, Joseph F. Ada, wrote in these pages recently. His words should be heeded.

An extensive report by a federal inter-agency task force will be the basis for congressional action. The task will not be easy, for there are gaps and ambiguities between the wish for more independence felt by many in Guam and their commitment to become an even closer part of the United States. The people of Guam have U.S. citizenship, but the dependent status of the island is the source of substantial discrimination, including denial of social benefits provided other citizens, imposition of non-competitive shipping rates and unfair regulation of industrial and trade development. Commonwealth status would greatly expand self-government, in effect creating a semi-independent nation in free association with the United States.

Guam is enjoying an economic boom, led by tourism and a massive U.S. military investment. Last year there were 600,000 tourists, 90% of them from Japan, a major source of income for the 130,000 Guam citizens. The American government maintains Navy, communications and strategic air facilities with 11,000 military personnel and their dependents. Guam’s leaders do not want to weaken the ties to Washington, but they want to strengthen their own ability to govern themselves and plan their future. That, as the governor pointed out, is certainly consistent with the views of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

The move to commonwealth on the part of Guam is one of several changes looming among the American territories. The Senate will hold hearings in the days ahead on legislation to facilitate a referendum on the future of Puerto Rico, where modifications of the existing commonwealth status appear a more likely outcome than either the statehood or independence proposals that also will be on the ballot. And in the Virgin Islands, which now has the same status as Guam, there also is talk of petitioning for commonwealth status.

No such movement is reported in American Samoa. Commonwealth status already has been granted the Northern Marianas, and the other Pacific territories taken from Japan in World War II--Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands--are independent but with 15-year compacts of full association with the United States covering defense and security.

Guam came into American possession as part of the settlement of the Spanish-American War 91 years ago. Too often in the intervening years, Washington has been insensitive to the wishes of the people of Guam. The time has come for a prompt response to this, the fourth request for commonwealth status.