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‘Future status of some IRs uncertain’
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Posted on Jul 21 2008
Federal Labor ombudsman Jim Benedetto said the Department of Homeland Security may come up with a solution on how to address the status of immediate relatives of CNMI permanent residents.
“As far as the people who’d become IRs [under] the CNMI permanent residence program that was discontinued years ago, I don’t know what’s going to happen to them,” said Benedetto during Saturday’s forum with Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, and Indian communities held at Kilili Beach pavilion.
The official said that when the federalization law was drafted, the authors did not even know that these class of people existed.
“So the Homeland Security folks are going to have to come up with some sort of solutions to that. And frankly, I don’t know what they are going to do,” he said.
It was not clear how many IRs of permanent residents exist in the CNMI.
With respect to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, Benedetto said there will be no changes in their status because they are already entitled to green cards based on having U.S. citizen spouses.
As for IRs of Federated States of Micronesia citizens, the ombudsman admitted he doesn’t know the answer either.
Benedetto suggested to the workers to raise the issue in an e-mail format so they could send it to Igor Timofeyev, director of immigration policy and special adviser for refugee and asylum at the Department of Homeland Security. He was the head of the federal delegation that visited CNMI last week.
Benedetto said when Timofeyev’s has an answer to that issue, it will be forwarded to the workers.
