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‘No support for worker group seeking permanent residency’
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Posted on Sep 19 2004
The House leadership is discouraging the ongoing move by a group of nonresident workers, which seeks to petition the U.S. Congress for permanent U.S. residency status.
Initially, the “Decade” movement has been soliciting the participation of laborers who have been legally working in the Commonwealth for at least 10 years to join in the petition. The movement is now reportedly entertaining alien workers who have been working in the CNMI for at least five years.
These developments prompted the House leadership to issue a media statement discouraging the movement’s clamor for permanent residency.
“We want to make a clear distinction between the group identified as ‘stateless’ and the ‘Decade’ group,” said House leadership spokesman Charles Reyes Jr. “We support the stateless group because this [is composed of] people who were born on CNMI soil. We believe that they are entitled to U.S. citizenship.”
“We do not support the Decade group,” Reyes said. “Just because they’ve been here for 10 or five years is not sufficient reason for them to seek U.S. citizenship or permanent residency.”
Unlike the so-called stateless persons, Reyes emphasized that members of the Decade movement were not born in the CNMI.
Federal immigration policy, however, allows those lawfully living in the United States for at least five years to ask the government for permanent residency status.
Herman T. Guerrero, a former constitutional convention delegate, had earlier said that the CNMI government should urge the U.S. Congress to grant permanent residency status to alien workers who have been legally staying on the islands for at least 10 years.
Guerrero had separately asked Gov. Juan N. Babauta to include a question to CNMI voters in the Nov. 2005 Commonwealth elections whether the Commonwealth should hold another constitutional convention or not. Babauta said he would issue a proclamation to include the question in the ballot in next year’s polls.
A constitutional convention may pave the way for major amendments to the CNMI Constitution, including provisions on CNMI permanent residency. (John Ravelo)
