A memorandum for the stateless? | ||
I remember the night the Uyghurs arrived in Palau. I’ m sure everyone on the island that night 17 years ago remembers it. Shortly before dawn, with no commercial flights inbound, the loudest plane I’ ve ever heard circled twice. As virtually the entire land mass of Palau lies in the flight path of the airport, the arrival was anything but secret.
In 2001, a group of Uyghur activists from China’ s
Xinjiang region was captured in Afghanistan and whisked off to Guantanamo
Bay, where they waited for eight years with no criminal charges until a federal judge ordered their release.
During a round of compact funding talks, someone proposed allowing the Uyghurs’ temporary resettlement in Palau.
China was not happy, branding the Uyghurs terrorists. Members of the Olbiil Era Kelulau were not happy.
As the years have passed and more information about scores of Guantanamo detainees has slowly trickled out, fewer and fewer of those captured were found to be a risk to anyone other than the warlords and dirt farmer neighbors who turned them over to the U. S. military for a cash prize. Only a handful were ever charged with any crime.
A friend of mine accused the newly inaugurated Obama administration of making them stateless. Turns out they already were.
Six Uyghurs were resettled in Palau in
2009 and left quietly in 2015.
On Dec. 23, 2025, Palau and the U. S. announced an agreement in which Palau would accept up to 75 third-party nationals facing deportation from the
U. S. According to the memorandum of understanding, Palau will vet these individuals to ensure they do not have criminal backgrounds. Palau will receive
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$ 7.5 million to cover the resettlement costs and an additional $ 6 million to shore up the civil service pension plan and enhance law enforcement efforts.
As for the deportees— are we calling them that?— they will help shore up labor shortages. President Surangel
Whipps Jr. said vetting will also match a deportee with a needed skill.
Create a sovereign state and infuse it with outside cash, much like the windfall that follows the discovery of oil, and rather than holding the building blocks of an economy, you instill a false sense of wealth. Then it becomes cheaper and easier to bring in outsiders for any necessary labor. Throw in the compact’ s open travel and outmigration, the escape valve not to take your society seriously, and you have a mismatch in policy.
I don’ t fault individuals for seeking opportunity. But I do fault governments that barely try to create opportunities for their citizens.
America’ s policy throughout the region has demonstrated time and again that economic development and improvement of the human condition were never the goal. Strategic deniability and military access, the perpetual realpolitik, have always been. Everything else can take a backseat.
Everything in this agreement is hypothetical. As of press time, neither the
U. S. nor Palau had made the full text of the MOU available.
Apparently, we’ re just supposed to trust what they tell us.
For now, there are more questions than answers.
Who are these deportees? Why can’ t they go home? Does the U. S. plan on entering into similar agreements with other nations? What concessions will those countries get? What criteria will
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Palau use in its vetting process? Will it exclude any nationalities?
All we know, based on the government announcement, is that they have no criminal offenses other than immigration violations. But what are those immigration offenses? Crossing the Rio Grande
River in the dead of night? Living for
10 years on a tourist visa? A not-verythorough asylum application, or more frightening, an asylum application with merit that the U. S. ignored? Can they return home? What passports do they carry? What’ s the long-term plan?
Here’ s what I’ m really asking: Are they stateless? Are they unable to avail themselves of the protections of their country, even though it might not feel like protection? Or are they heading for a republic where citizenship is based on the principle of jus sanguinis or right of blood, and where immigration status, while laxly enforced, does not give any concrete long-term rights?
What if one of them commits a crime? Can he or she be deported? What if no other country accepts them?
Is this a way to sidestep any international convention to which Palau is not a signatory, such as the 1951 Refugee Convention?
On Jan. 12, I emailed the Palau embassy in Washington, D. C., requesting an interview on this matter. So far, I have not heard back. The website also appears to have been last updated in 2017.
I’ ll try again.
I earnestly hope for the deal’ s success.
I hope even more that this is not a signal of less governmental transparency.
Perhaps a proper official will release the full MOU, or perhaps this is a matter for a Freedom of Information Act request. Barring that, it looks like we’ ll have to wait and get 75 answers on a case-by-case basis.
Gabriel McCoard is an attorney who previously worked in Palau and Chuuk
State. Send feedback to gabrieljmccoard @ hotmail. com.
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