U.S. Senate adjourns without acting on federal takeover bill

House Speaker Diego T. Benavente yesterday expressed relief that the U.S. Senate has yet to vote on legislation seeking extension of federal immigration laws to the Northern Marianas, which he said has given more time for island leaders to stave off such takeover proposal.

Senators in Washington D.C. adjourned its first session last Nov. 24 and went on sine die without deliberating on the proposal contained in Senate Bill 1052. They are scheduled to convene their second session in the 106th Congress on January 24, 2000.

On Nov. 1, the measure was reported out to the floor by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which recommended favorably on the bill, and was placed immediately on the legislative calendar for voting.

While it is not certain when the bill will be finally tackled by the full Senate, Mr. Benavente welcomed the news as it means that CNMI will have additional time to lobby against its passage.

“We need to find time to convince Congress against acting on the legislation, that this is not necessary since we can make the reforms ourselves,” he told reporters.

Sponsored by Committee Chairman Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the bipartisan measure was amended extensively when the committee unanimously passed it last Oct. 20 amid CNMI’s strong opposition.

Automatic takeover

It seeks automatic implementation of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act in the Commonwealth once the bill becomes a law, subject to a nine-year transition period intended to help local businesses like hotels and tourism-related establishments cope with potential adverse economic impact.

The committee, which deals with island issues, scrapped key provisions that would have provided the CNMI a legal means to contest in the court a federal takeover of its immigration functions based on findings of the U.S. Attorney General under the first draft of the proposal.

Because of the change, the transition period in which to orderly phase in INA was shortened from 10 to nine years ending December 31, 2009, with up to 10-year extension for hotel and tourism industries.

The expiration date of grace period, however, hinges on whether the measure would be passed by both the Senate and the House, and then signed into law by President Clinton between now and December 1999. Under the proposal, the target implementation will begin one year after its enactment.

According to Mr. Benavente, the delay in the Senate is a “successful attempt by the CNMI to bide time… to be able to show our commitment” to reform local labor and immigration.

Island leaders are hoping to drum up support of Republican leaders in Congress to quell the latest federal takeover proposal which was a byproduct of an earlier bill passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year, but failed to go through the full body.

Early this month, GOP members succeeded in opposing a Democrat amendment on a bill that would have raised minimum wage in the CNMI to that of a new federal level of $6.15 an hour.

For the past two years, there have been moves to strip CNMI control of its immigration, minimum wage and custom standards stemming from alleged failure by the island government to curb influx of cheap labor from Asian countries — a move that local officials say will spell economic collapse.