Lawmakers to urge help for workers’ children

House lawmakers Tina Sablan (I-Saipan) and Edward Salas (R-Saipan) are poised to urge the CNMI Department of Labor to provide special help for children with disabilities whose parents are foreign workers facing repatriation.

In a pending letter to Labor, Sablan and Salas plan to ask the department to address a host of regulatory issues such as due process concerns and the consistency of its enforcement efforts. One key topic among the many to be detailed in the letter, Sablan said in an interview Monday, will be Labor’s approach to dealing with foreign workers whose children—often U.S. citizens—have disabilities requiring special care they might not be able to get in their home nations should their parents be sent back.

“These parents haven’t found new jobs and they’re worried about being sent home and what will happen with their children if that happens,” Sablan said. “This is probably a situation that should also be brought up with federal officials as they draft the new regulations on immigration.”

Sablan noted that in talks held earlier this year, Labor officials revealed they are crafting so-called “extreme hardship” rules for foreign workers, a plan that could pave the way for measures to address the special needs of such families.

Sablan and Salas’ bid to aid these families comes as a coalition of foreign workers with children who have disabilities—including conditions like autism, Down’s Syndrome, hearing impairments and Attention Deficit Disorder—is now taking shape on Saipan with plans also to rally support elsewhere in the Commonwealth in a bid to win government help and provisions that would allow the families to stay in the CNMI with their children.

“If they have to go back to the Philippines, which is where many of them are from, or other countries, they probably can’t get the help they need,” said Irene Tantiado, president of the Coalition of United Workers, a local labor group. “And if they leave their children here—they have special needs—who will take care of them?”

In an interview Sunday, a trio of workers involved in the newly formed group—who declined to be named publicly—urged parents like them throughout the Commonwealth to band together.

“Our kids are special,” said one mother whose autistic son receives therapy on Saipan. “If they send me home, what will happen to my son? All parents of children with disabilities on Saipan need to stay with them to guide them as they grow.”

The workers noted that in rural regions of the Philippines, for example, access to services that are available in the CNMI—like speech therapy, occupational therapy and hydrotherapy—is limited or often nonexistent, meaning the services they get in the CNMI are all the more valuable. But Labor officials, the workers said, have previously told them, like other parents whose children are citizens, that they could elect to leave their children on Saipan in the care of someone else when they are repatriated.

“These kids are different than other kids because they have special needs,” a second parent said. “They can’t send us home and have us leave them here.”

Neither Salas nor Labor officials could be reached for comment on the issue at press time.