Worker rule out on Sept. 7

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan said yesterday that the long-delayed final regulations governing foreign workers in the CNMI will be published in the Federal Register on Sept. 7 in Washington, D.C. (Sept. 8 in the CNMI).

However, the transitional Commonwealth-only worker regulations will be placed on public inspection a day earlier or on Sept. 7 in the CNMI, Sablan said.

At the same time, United Workers Movement-NMI president Rabby Syed said yesterday he will go to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 30 to, among other things, request Congress members to introduce legislation on the U.S. Interior’s recommendation to grant improved immigration status to long-term foreign workers in the CNMI.

Sablan had already introduced HR 1466, which seeks to grant CNMI-only resident status for limited groups of people in the CNMI. He said that Interior has never recommended legislation for its recommendations.

Syed pointed out that HR 1466 does not cover all legal, long-term foreign workers in the CNMI.

Sablan and Syed, together with the rest of the community, have been waiting for the actual release of the CW rule, almost two years since the federal government took control of CNMI immigration.

The delegate said the public inspection version of the document is simply a pre-publication Word version of the document that’s available online one day prior to formal, official publication.

“The official, Federal Register publication date/document of Wednesday, 9/7/11 (Thursday, 9/8/11 ChST), is the document and date to which effective dates, legal citations, etc., are derived and applied,” Sablan said.

Sablan’s announcement came after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed the regulations, paving the way its publication.

The worker regulations will lay out the process for employers to obtain a special CNMI-only visa for their workers who do not qualify for any other U.S. visa category.

This CNMI-only visa will allow them to continue working in the Northern Marianas, but not in any other part of the U.S. The visa will be available until the end of the immigration transition period, scheduled for 2014.

Syed said he hopes that the rule will be able to accommodate as many foreign workers as possible.

The movement also wants to know whether the final CW rule will still require foreign workers to secure parole or advance parole every time they re-enter the CNMI from vacations or emergency leaves.

Because of the possible massive application for CW visas once the regulations are published, Syed said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should consider sending representatives to Saipan to personally process the applications, instead of having these applications sent and processed in Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, California or other states, then sent back to the CNMI.

“We already experienced long application period for advance parole because the applications had to be sent outside the CNMI and processed outside the CNMI,” Syed told Saipan Tribune.

There’s less than three months to go before the Nov. 27 expiration of the two-year period allowed under the federalization law wherein workers can still remain in the CNMI using a Commonwealth-issued permit.

After Nov. 27, 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.

Marie Thérèse Sebrechts, regional media manager for DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, earlier said that an outreach team will be coming to the CNMI later this month to hold briefing sessions and answer questions from the public about the regulations.

The team will include USCIS district director David Gulick, a community relations officer, a press officer, an officer from the California Service Center division that handles CNMI applications, and staff members from the USCIS legal counsel and policy who are familiar with the CNMI regulations.

The release of the CW rule will not have anything to do with proposals or requests to grant improved immigration status to long-term foreign workers in the CNMI.

Syed said that UWM-NMI continues to push for improved immigration status for long-term foreign workers in the CNMI, specifically “green card” or pathway to U.S. citizenship.

He will be off to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 30 to meet with Congress members and request for the introduction of a legislation that will reflect the Interior’s recommendation to grant improved status for foreign workers who have been in the CNMI for at least five years.

These recommendations include conferring outright U.S. citizenship on these long-term aliens by an act of Congress, granting them permanent residency status leading to U.S. citizenship, or granting them a status similar to those given to citizens from the Freely Associated States.

Unlike millions of immigrants in the U.S., Syed said these foreign workers in the CNMI came to the CNMI legally and possess U.S. social security numbers.

During his trip to the nation’s capital, Syed will also be meeting with non-government organizations and members of the national and international press to share with them the plight of thousands of long-term foreign workers in the Commonwealth.