Micronesia [FSM] - People

The population is predominantly Micronesian but there are some Polynesian enclaves. The Spanish, German and Japanese colonial past is reflected in personal names and language.

Beginning about 40,000 years ago, Papuan-speaking peoples moved into Melanesia, followed about 7,000 years ago by Austronesian-speaking peoples who moved through Melanesia and on into Micronesia and Polynesia. The Pacific population is now marked by diversity and isolation.

Micronesians have too often been negatively portrayed in the media and by certain government actions and statements as a drain on the limited resources available to provide educational, health and social services for our low income residents.

Micronesian migrants, unlike other newcomers, are not technically “immigrants” residing in the U.S. under Immigration and Nationality Act restrictions. Instead, they are entitled to enter the U.S. without visas and to live and work indefinitely under the terms of the COFA treaties. Furthermore, their increasing exercise of this right is the direct consequence of an overwhelming prevalence of disease and a lack of economic selfsufficiency in Micronesia.

Clear evidence of culture change is found in the decreasmg distribution and use of traditional skills and knowledge that once wecre highly prized forms of property. Young people remam interested in learning traditional medical lore, but modern education and the availability of new technologies obviate, in their eyes, the need for most other traditional practices. This atitude has reduced the importance of the elderly in the education of their children and grandchildren.

Until recently, birth rates had not fallen much in the Federated States of Micronesia. One reason why fertility rates were high in the Pacific Islands is that contraceptive use was lower there than in many other developing countries and very low compared with that in countries having similar levels of income per capita.

Mortality data worldwide indicate that as life expectancy rises, death from infection falls and death from cardiovascular disease and other diseases associated with late middle age rises. Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati, and the Federated States of Micronesia - some of the Pacific countries with the lowest life expectancies - exhibit a traditional pattern in which infectious diseases predominate as a cause of death. Infectious diseases were responsible for more than 20 percent of deaths in the malarious countries, such as the Federated States of Micronesia. Micronesia had high rates of death from cardiovascular disease, which accounted for more than 25 percent of all deaths in the late 1980s.