HR 1466 makes strange bedfellows

Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows and this couldn’t be more true in the case of Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan’s controversial H.R. 1466 now pending at the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and one his staunchest critics, human rights advocate Wendy Doromal, are both opposing the measure, which seeks to provide a “CNMI-only” status to a select group of people in the CNMI.

Speaking to the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs in a public hearing Friday, Fitial said he is strongly opposed to extending improved status to parents of U.S. citizen children.

Aside from being a large-scale amnesty for aliens, the governor said that Sablan’s bill is a “significant distortion of the U.S. immigration system,” extends status to deadbeat parents, those who are unemployed, unemployable, and even with those with a history of illegal employment, and parents with no means of support.

He also scored H.R. 1466 for extending status to parents who have already left the Commonwealth and parents of U.S. citizen children raised elsewhere.

Fitial also contends that the bill “strips away the protections of the federal Administrative Procedures Act by permitting the Department of Homeland Security to promulgate implementing regulations without the customary requirement of issuing them in proposed form and providing for a period within which the affected parties may comment.”

The governor added that the bill refers to a definition of “immediate relative” that was in the Commonwealth Code prior to May 2008 but was already struck from the Commonwealth Code by the CNMI Legislature.

Press secretary Angel Demapan, who accompanied Fitial to the panel hearing in Washington, D.C., said the governor was glad to have had the opportunity to testify to get his point across and ultimately, for the opportunity to speak in defense of the CNMI’s best interests.

“We don’t want to see that measure pass as it is written today. As stated in his testimony, Gov. Fitial reiterated that he proposes an H-5 visa within the regular U.S. Immigration system and not any form of special interest-driven pathway to citizenship. The U.S. has long had a system in place to entertain green card or citizenship matters. The governor does not agree that any special motives should be cause to disrespect all other Americans who became Americans the right and prudent way,” said Demapan.

Doromal, for her part, is opposing H.R. 1466 for an entirely different reason and criticized early Friday morning’s public hearing for the “conspicuous absence” of any advocate or representative from the nonresident worker community on the witness panel.

“Even though nonresidents make up an estimated 80-90 percent of the private workforce and a majority of the CNMI’s adult population, their voice at the hearing will remain silent except for written testimony that will be submitted. This fact diminishes the credibility of this hearing and any other hearing where issues regarding nonresidents are discussed and no nonresident workers are invited to testify. It suggests that members of the subcommittee regard the legal nonresident workers as labor units rather than as the essential de facto citizens that they are. It minimizes their importance and vital contributions. It marginalizes their humanity,” she said in an email to the Saipan Tribune.

Doromal believes the hearing was orchestrated to consider only those nonresident workers who have a U.S. spouse or child.

“The other 12,000 nonresident workers were mentioned only to incorrectly address 3,000 as ‘illegals,’ to claim that many stole jobs, to suggest that they diminished the culture or other demeaning and racist statements,” she said.

The former Rota public school teacher likened the debate on H.R. 1466 to issues brought up in U.S. Congress before the Civil War.

“When I was at the hearing I kept thinking that somewhere on these same grounds similar debates were held 150 years ago ––debates where people were discussed as if they were merely tools and instruments to boost an economy; debates about people being chained to a place with travel restrictions; debates about people being stripped of liberty and freedoms, debates about people being denied basic social, political and economic rights; debates about people needed to serve the privileged class of the two-tiered society. How was this hearing much different than the debates about slavery? How has it happened that our nation has stepped so far back in time? Truly, that hearing made me ashamed to say that I am an American. I weep for our country and for the de facto citizens of the CNMI,” said Doromal.