Admin: Delay action on HR 1466 until 2010 census data is released

The Fitial administration wants the U.S. Congress to delay consideration of Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan’s HR 1466 until after the 2010 census data for the CNMI are published, citing the bill’s enormous harm to the Commonwealth.

But Sablan said the census data has nothing to do with his bill, which seeks to grant CNMI-only resident status for limited groups of people in the CNMI.

The CNMI’s 2010 census data are expected to be released this summer.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s special counsel Howard P. Willens, in a memo submitted to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs on behalf of the governor, cited the administration’s concerns about one of the four categories or groups of people covered by Sablan’s bill.

HR 1466 proposes a “CNMI-only resident status” for four groups, including the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens as of May 8, 2008, and continuing to be on the islands. This is the category that the Fitial administration is concerned about.

“Once we have a reasonable estimate of the number of children involved, we can calculate the number of parents who are included in this fourth category,” Willens said.

The administration said there’s no data in the U.S. Department of the Interior’s report that bear on the issue of the number of aliens in the CNMI who had a minor U.S. citizen child on May 8, 2008

It also said there are no data in the 2005 CNMI Household Income and Expenditures Survey report that support an estimate of 3,000 to 4,000 alien parents affected by HR 1466.

The Fitial administration reiterates its belief that there will be 11,000 or more alien parents or immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who will be afforded a path to U.S. citizenship by virtue of HR 1466 over the next 15 years.

The administration is questioning the oral testimony of David Gootnick of U.S. Government Accountability Office—not in his written presentation during a recent hearing on HR 1466—that there will be 3,000 to 4,000 aliens who would be affected by the specific provision of Sablan’s bill.

“Delegate Sablan also supported this lower figure,” the administration said.

The administration said it does not believe that it is productive to discuss the likelihood that alien parents who qualify under the fourth category of HR 1466 will elect to pursue their options under the bill or not to do so.

The other groups affected by Sablan’s HR 1466 are 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).”

Sablan said his HR 1466 and the Interior’s recommendation to Congress to grant improved immigration status to aliens who have been legally in the CNMI for at least five years are entirely separate from the Commonwealth-only transitional worker rule which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is expected to publish soon.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget completed on Aug. 9 the review of the CW rule, with barely three months to go before Nov. 27.

Nov. 27, 2011 is the last day of the two-year period allowed under the federalization law wherein workers can still remain in the CNMI using a Commonwealth-issued permit. After that, foreign workers need to have a U.S. employment visa such as a transitional CW visa or an H visa, or they could face deportation.