‘Alien workers should never stop speaking out’

Human rights advocate Wendy Doromal has urged alien workers to speak out for their political rights and that of their children.

“Speak out and stand firm for justice and for political rights for yourselves and your children. I stand united with you always,” said Doromal in her speech during a welcome party prepared by some alien workers’ groups at Garapan Central Park Saturday night.

She said social justice and true reform cannot be achieved merely through legislation but by changing people’s hearts through speaking out and education.

The human rights advocate arrived on Saipan with her daughter on Friday. She will be in the CNMI for two weeks to meet and interview alien workers and their families.

Doromal will be highlighting issues that guest workers would to like to see considered for inclusion in the regulations governing the “federalization” law, Public Law 110-229, in an updated status report to be presented to federal officials.

“Every worker deserves and should request fair treatment while working on U.S. soil,” she said, to loud applause from about a hundred workers of different nationalities.

Doromal said every long-term guest worker and every alien worker who is a parent of a U.S. citizen should be given a green card.

She asked nonresident workers to speak with a united voice and shout down propaganda such as the notion that if given green cards the guest workers would abandon the CNMI—a place “that most consider their home.”

She stressed that a free and open labor market would result in the economic recovery of the CNMI.

“As long as guest workers remain disenfranchised—whether under a local labor system or a federal system—the CNMI will not have a free labor market to grow the economy,” she said.

Doromal said local and federal labor and immigration laws that promote indentured servitude and regard guest workers as replaceable commodities must be replaced with laws that provide for the rights of all the people who call the CNMI home.

“It is morally wrong to look at guest workers as disposable commodities, rather than as future citizens,” she said. “An exclusive society that disenfranchises a major portion of the population from political and social rights will not prosper politically, socially, morally, or economically.”

With respect to rumors and concerns about the federalization law, Doromal said regulations and policies for the new law and federal guest worker program are being formulated now so no one can predict what they will look like.

She said federal officials have promised that the CNMI will have the needed workforce through the new federal program.

Doromal said the regulations will impact three major areas—federal guest worker program including labor and immigration policies, policies for foreign investment, and access to tourists.

She encouraged guest workers to focus primarily on the issues that will directly affect them such as the status of long-term guest workers, status of parents of U.S. citizen children, and a system of speedy processing for guest workers who qualify for H-1 and H-2 visas.

Other important issues, she cited, are the application of the U.S. asylum laws to the CNMI and a just federal guest worker program.

Doromal said regulations will also have to be formulated to address the status of people who were granted CNMI permanent residency in the 1970s and 1980s, and the alien spouses of citizens from the Freely Associated States.

She said a just guest worker program requires oversight, adequately trained and staffed offices, and strict enforcement of all labor and immigration laws.

“It is not enough to merely change the name of the guest worker program from the CNMI guest worker program to the federal guest worker program,” she said.

Doromal said the new guest worker program must reflect democratic and constitutional principles, “otherwise it will be as dysfunctional as the existing program.”