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DIVERSION OF ‘BOAT PEOPLE’ Not meant to deny asylum –– INS
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Posted on Sep 21 1999
The use of Tinian as temporary holding area for illegal Chinese immigrants caught attempting to enter Guam is not an attempt to deny asylum to those who have legitimate application, according to federal officials.
“That was not at all en effort to prevent people from seeking asylum. We devoted great level of resources,” said Bo Cooper, general counsel of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
He said INS deployed asylum officers to Tinian to screen the more than 600 illegal aliens who were sent to temporary shelters on the island after the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted their boats near Guam.
CNMI leaders earlier have said diverting these undocumented aliens to the island has been convenient to the federal government because Commonwealth laws forbid granting of asylum.
“Quite the contrary,” Cooper said during last week’s teleconference with local reporters. “The United States has been vigilant in all these interdiction processes to perform asylum screening of all those who wished to seek asylum.”
It was not known how many of the undocumented aliens who stayed on Tinian were eventually granted asylum, but the bulk of these people were deported to China after two months.
According to Cooper, the lack of asylum program under CNMI’s immigration laws is one of several reasons the Clinton Administration has pushed extension of Immigration and Nationality Act to the Commonwealth.
“Indeed, it’s the absence of a viable asylum application process in the CNMI that partly supports our view that immigration laws of the United States must apply,” he said.
INS has come under fire in recent months over its handling of the immigration crisis on Guam which has overwhelmed the island’s limited resources and prompted local officials to propose changes in the immigration system there.
Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) has also expressed fear over its capability to protect the borders of the Northern Marianas if the federal takeover of local immigration were to be implemented.
