‘Bill will perpetuate apartheid-type status of alien workers’

Human rights advocate and former Rota public school teacher Wendy Doromal is opposed to a bill introduced by Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan giving a “CNMI-only resident status” for four specific groups of people in the CNMI, including foreign parents of U.S. citizens.

In the written testimony she will submit to a House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs public hearing on Sablan’s H.R. 1466 on July 14, Doromal said the bill sets a dangerous precedent for states and territories who may also choose to preempt or tweak federal immigration laws to suit their own purposes.

“Do we really want to see ‘Florida-only’ status, ‘Arizona-only’ status or other states and territories creating separate status categories to push their self-serving political agendas so that they can maintain a permanently disenfranchised underclass?” she asked in her written testimony.

Doromal, who will personally attend the hearing, insists that H.R. 1466’s proposed new “CNMI-only” immigration status is a “separatist, apartheid-type status” that would continue the “persistent exploitation of foreign workers” under federal rule.

“Under H.R. 1466, only those legal nonresident workers who would qualify eventually to upgrade their status under current INA categories could obtain an improved status. These groups are only those with spouses that are U.S. citizens and those who are parents of U.S. citizens. Such nonresident workers could either be petitioned by their U.S. citizen spouses at any time, or petitioned by their U.S. citizen children when those children reach the age of 21, as the INA provides. However, thousands of other legal, long-term workers would not qualify for this status or any status under H.R. 1466,” she said.

Doromal, who now lives in Florida, said she is arguing against claims that the H.R. 1466 aims “to keep families from being broken apart.”

“The truth is that since the bill provides security for only families that have a family member who is a U.S. citizen, excluding thousands of other families, this is not a valid argument. It excludes nonresident ‘families’ in which both parents are nonresident workers with no U.S. citizen children and families in which the married nonresident workers are childless. It excludes nonresident workers who are gay. It excludes nonresident workers who live and work in the CNMI and support their families who remain in their homelands. These distant families are hoping that the difficult and lengthy separation from fathers, mothers, or spouses will be worth it if the family member is granted permanent residency,” she said.

The July 14 hearing will be at 10am in Room 1324 of Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C.

United Workers Movement-NMI president Rabby Syed said his group will monitor the subcommittee hearing via Internet on July 14 starting midnight beside the U.S. Department of Homeland Security office at the TSL Plaza.

Syed earlier said that the United Workers Movement does not support Sablan’s H.R. 1466 because it does not cover foreign workers who have been in the CNMI for years or decades.

Syed reiterated the group’s position, asking the federal government to provide “green card” or a pathway to U.S. citizenship for long-term foreign workers in the CNMI.

He said the bill will be unfair to many long-term foreign workers, including those who have been in the CNMI legally for over 20 years, for example, and do not have U.S. citizen children.

Sablan’s H.R. 1466 proposes a “CNMI-only resident status” for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens as of May 8, 2008, and continuing to be on the islands, CNMI permanent residents, those born in the CNMI between Jan. 1, 1974 and Jan. 9, 1978, and the spouses or children, “as defined in section 101(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(b)(1)), of an alien described in subclauses (I) or (II).”

Aside from H.R. 1466, the House subcommittee will also tackle the implementation of U.S. Public Law 110-229, or the Consolidated Natural Resources Act, which placed CNMI immigration under federal control.