A bittersweet Thanksgiving

For nonresidents who have spent most of their adult lives in the CNMI and where they have raised their children, this year’s Thanksgiving holiday is more about finding a new job and hoping that their parole request will be granted to be able to continue their lawful stay in the Commonwealth.

Florentina Duroni, 52, said she’s hoping that her request for parole will be granted so she won’t be separated from her three U.S. citizen children aged 10 to 16. She came to Saipan in 1989 as a house worker earning $2.75 an hour. Now jobless, she said she’s been trying to look for a new employer to help her partner raise their three children.

She said she filed her parole request on Oct. 28 and is still waiting for a response from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“All this time, I’ve been worried whether USCIS will grant my parole request. If I don’t get my parole, I could lose my status and I would be separated from my children. They all said they don’t want to leave Saipan; they said this is their birthplace,” she said.

Duroni is one of those hoping for the passage of Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan’s H.R. 1466, which seeks a CNMI-only resident status for four groups of aliens, including parents of U.S. citizen children.

Baltazar De Leon, 55, lined up yesterday at the post office in Chalan Kanoa to mail his parole request with USCIS.

He said he needs to be paroled so he could continue to have lawful status in the CNMI until he completes his application for “green card.” He said his 24-year-old U.S. citizen daughter is petitioning him for one.

Another nonresident who asked that he be identified only by his initials “J.S.R.” said his current employer has just advertised his position to see whether there are qualified U.S. workers. He said the whole advertising process will take 10 or more days, so a Commonwealth-only worker petition won’t be filed until after Nov. 27 or 28.

“So that means I have to stop working because the petition will be filed after the deadline. But at least I will have parole so that I won’t become illegal when I have an employer,” said the 49-year-old electrician who came to Saipan in 1987.

Rodolfo Francisco, 51, said he’s seeking humanitarian parole while he continues to look for a job. He said his former employer still owes him some $25,000 in back wages, penalties, and interests.

Md. Abdul Matin, from Bangladesh, lined up to mail a CW petition that his employer prepared. “My employer processed this but it’s only now that I’m sending it,” said Matin, who expects to be done with the mailing at 2pm, after lining up at 10:30am.

Overstayers

Even those who are aware that they are considered “overstayer” or illegally staying in the CNMI are trying their luck by applying for humanitarian parole.

A handful of Chinese nationals who came to Saipan as tourists and now have U.S. citizen children were preparing parole requests to be mailed to USCIS.

A 63-year-old nonresident from the Philippines, who came to Saipan in 1988 to work as a mason/carpenter, said yesterday that he lost his full-time job in 2000. He said he does not have an umbrella permit.

He was writing a parole request yesterday, hoping USCIS would grant him parole and consider the fact that there’s an employer willing to file a CW petition for him.

“If I don’t get it, I may just have to go home,” he said.

The bigger question

USCIS district director David Gulick said there’s no restriction on filing for parole if one is present without admission. But the real question is whether this parole request will be granted.

“It’s an individual, case by case basis. They would have to show exceptional circumstances to warrant parole,” he said.

But for those considered illegally staying in the CNMI, the chance of being granted parole if they request it, diminishes.

The worker regulations require that employers employ only those lawfully present in the CNMI if they are hired from here.

Tourists are not qualified to apply for parole.