Micronesians Abroad

Hezel, Francis X. (2006-11-10). [www.micsem.org Micronesians Abroad]. Micronesian Counselor (Report). Kolonia, Pohnpei: Micronesian Seminar. pp. 1–12.

• Has attachment: File:66WRVAQW.pdf

Abstract: Today there are over 30,000 FSM citizens and 20,000 Marshallese living in the United States and its territories. Add to that possibly another 10,000 Palauans, and you have a total of 60,000 Micronesians living away from home. These are not students, young people away for a short time, or islanders who are doing a brief stint with the military. These are people–young and old, fluent English-speakers and those who know no more than a few words of the language–who have chosen to take up residence abroad.

Emigration is not an entirely new phenomenon. Palauans have been leaving home since the late 1940s. Already in 1953, there were a hundred Palauans on Guam with their own Palau Association. As their numbers grew in subsequent years, they would meet in a Palauan bai and worship in a local language Protestant church. From the early 1970s, as hundreds of Micronesian students began heading for college in the US, thanks to the extension of the Pell Grant, emigration from Palau stepped up to about 250 a year. These were not young men and women on their way to college for a few years before returning home; they were people with a one-way ticket out. By the late 1970s, individuals from other parts of Micronesia as well were dribbling into Guam and the US with the intention of staying. The 1980 US Census recorded several hundred people from what was then coming to be known as FSM, most of them Outer Island Yapese, living in the US. These mostly educated, young people were loathe to return to their atolls where there was no wage employment, but reluctant to settle in Yap where they lacked status and land...

Extra details:

DOI: 10.1353/CP.0.0007
MAG: 2072237750
CorpusID: 162320450
OpenAlex: W2072237750