Worker regs now with White House

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday the draft Commonwealth-only transitional worker regulations for review, five months before the grace period for those without U.S. immigration status expires on Nov. 27.

While this is a major development in a long-delayed process, CNMI officials, the private sector, and workers separately called on the White House to complete the final regulations review way ahead of the 90-day maximum period allowed.

That 90-day period ends on Sept. 15.

By that time, there will only be two months left before Nov. 27, the last day of the two-year transition period allowed under the federalization law. After that, anyone who does not have some immigration status issued by the U.S. government will be “out of status” and subject to deportation.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan, in a statement yesterday, said, “It’s about time.”

He said DHS’ sending of the regulations to the White House’s OMB on June 15 is an internal comment period that is generally the last step before regulations are published for public scrutiny.

“We still cannot see the draft regulations themselves. But at least we know they are now moving forward. DHS isn’t holding on to them anymore. The department has sent the regulations out for comment by OMB and other federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, Interior, and Labor that have an interest in CNMI immigration,” he said.

Sablan said OMB can take less than 90 days to review the rule.

“I’m an optimist,” Sablan told Saipan Tribune in a brief phone interview.

More information is available at http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201010&RIN=1615-AB76.

Sablan, like many others in the CNMI including the Saipan Chamber of Commerce, has been urging DHS to get the regulations completed since they were shot down in 2009 following Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s lawsuit against the U.S. government over federalization.

Rabby Syed, president of the United Workers Movement-NMI, said if the White House uses the 90-day maximum review period, it will give workers and employers “a short time to make plans” after seeing the final regulations.

Syed is hoping that President Barack Obama will grant the United Workers Movement-NMI’s request to use his administrative power to protect some 16,000 legal aliens in the CNMI, until such time that Congress or other executive agencies grant these nonresidents a more permanent immigration status.

They are asking the president to grant legal nonresidents “parole-in place status with authorization to seek employment, and which “shall qualify them for employment-based visa applications.”

Douglas Brennan, president of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce, said DHS is “way past the deadline.”

“I’m disappointed. They’re moving forward but a snail’s pace. It’s frustrating. They should have issued this a long time ago,” said Brennan, who earlier said the delay is “getting ridiculous.”

Brennan, who is also general manager of Microl Corp., said if OMB finds “problems” with the DHS regulations, then it goes back again to DHS and therefore further delay the issuance of the final rule.

Senate Vice President Jude Hofschneider (R-Tinian), chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign and Federal Relations, said he and other senators who visited Washington, D.C. in March thought all along that DHS was already about to forward the regulations to the White House “at the time.”

“Now we’re learning they just sent it to the White House,” Hofschneider said. “Nevertheless, I hope OMB would dispose of it as soon as possible and not necessarily exhaust the 90 days allowed for the review so that people and businesses will have enough time to make decisions.”

The federal government took control of CNMI immigration on Nov. 28, 2009, pursuant to U.S. Public Law 110-229 that was signed in May 2008.

Press secretary Angel Demapan said yesterday that DHS’ sending of the regulations to the White House is a welcome development for the Fitial administration and for the business community.

“The administration has been urging the issuance of the worker regulations amidst mounting concerns from the islands’ guest workers and private employers alike. We hope that with this step now out of the way that the federal government will continue to act expeditiously on this matter so that both employers and employees are afforded ample time to implement their plans moving forward,” Demapan said.

The long-awaited worker regulations will provide a visa classification for non-U.S. citizens who work in the CNMI and who are not eligible for any other U.S. visa category.

The transitional worker program is intended to provide for an orderly transition from the CNMI permit system to the U.S. federal immigration system under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The rule will allow eligible non-U.S. citizens to continue working in the CNMI through the immigration transition period, which ends in 2014.

After the five-year transition period, the INA requirements become fully applicable in the CNMI.

Interim regulations were first published on Oct. 27, 2009. But a lawsuit by the CNMI government resulted in a federal court order prohibiting their implementation.

Since then, workers and businesses in the CNMI have been left in a state of uncertainty, guessing about what the rules for employment would be after the CNMI-issued visas most workers now have expire in November 2011.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said last year that she expected the regulations to be out by the first quarter of 2011. But the final day of the quarter, March 31, came and went without any sign of the regulations.

“It was incredibly frustrating,” Sablan said.

Sablan gave credit to Dr. John Fleming (R-LA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs with responsibilities for insular affairs, for the DHS action.

He said for some time, he and Fleming have discussed the need to bring DHS and other federal agencies in for a hearing on implementation of federal immigration.

“While there is no official notification of a date yet, I can say that federal agencies have been alerted that they are going to be facing the Subcommittee in the very near future. When they come before the Subcommittee, those agencies want to look like they are doing their job. DHS wants to be able to say, ‘we’re not the problem; we sent the Commonwealth-only transitional worker regs to OMB weeks ago,’” he said.

Sablan is now ranking member, or the senior Democrat on the Subcommittee. He publicly raised the issue of the regulations with Fleming at his very first hearing as ranking member on April 1 this year.