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Immigration urged to ready officers for federalization
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Posted on May 14 2008
Sen. Paul A. Manglona has urged the CNMI Division of Immigration to start preparing local immigration officers to take on jobs under the federalized system.
The Rota senator, in a letter to Immigration Director Melvin Grey, said that with proper training, current immigration officials and employees “may indeed qualify for future federal immigration jobs.”
Manglona urged Grey to establish a training program for the immigration officers. He said an estimate of the training costs will allow the Legislature to budget locally or to request aid from federal agencies for the education of the immigration employees.
“It is my hope that a majority of the federal jobs that will be created through the federalization of our immigration system may be filled by our local residents. I am optimistic that early planning and training can successfully transition our CNMI immigration officials towards this federal employment,”
Effective June 1, 2009, the U.S. government will run immigration in the Northern Marianas. The immigration federalization measure, which President Bush signed into law last week, says local immigration officers will be given preference in the hiring, but it does not offer guaranteed jobs for them.
The law states, “To the maximum extent practicable and consistent with the satisfactory performance of assigned duties…the Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of Labor shall recruit and hire personnel from among qualified US citizens and national applicants residing in the Commonwealth to serve as staff in carrying out the operations described in [this act].”
Grey has expressed concern for the local officers, whom he said are very competent in their jobs. He also said his division had made efforts to get training for the officers, but federal bureaucracy had frustrated such efforts.
He said that the Department of Homeland Security offices in Guam, Hawaii, and San Francisco gave him the runaround before the Washington, D.C. office finally turned him down and referred him to the Interior Department.
The Division of Immigration employs 65 officers.
