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Bush signs bill extending US immigration law to Marianas
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Posted on May 09 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Workers in the Mariana Islands will receive the protection of U.S. labor and immigration law under a bill signed Thursday by President Bush.
The measure, approved by Congress last month, creates a federally run guest-worker program in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which includes Saipan and 13 other islands north of Guam.
It also gives the commonwealth a delegate in the House with limited voting powers. Currently Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia have a delegate in the House.
The bill also designates a federal wilderness area in Washington state, creates heritage areas in Illinois and New York, and boost projects to create a Washington, D.C., memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower and a special commission to study a possible National Museum of the American Latino.
It also commemorates a site in Bainbridge Island, Wash., where Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes on their way to prison camps during World War II.
The Washington state measure would designate approximately 106,000 acres of national forest near Seattle as federal wilderness, blocking road-building and other development.
