‘Grant our parents parole-in-place, improved status’

Anne Asistores, 18, is asking what the federal government could do to help U.S. citizen children’s foreign parents who are now fearing deportation from the islands that have become their home for over 10 or over 20 years as legal contract workers.

Asistores was among a large group of children and young adults who held a peaceful rally at the Pedro P. Tenorio Multi-Purpose Center in Susupe on Wednesday night, coinciding with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ public outreach session.

The children carried placards asking the federal government not to break their families apart or asking for improved immigration status for their nonresident parents.

Asistores, a Marianas High School student, said that many parents are now panicking about their future.

Which was a cause for wonder for USCIS district director David Gulick.

It turned out that most of the children who joined the peaceful protest were never properly told that there will not be a mass deportation of foreign workers in the CNMI after Nov. 27 because they could obtain a CW status, H1B or other status under the Immigration and Nationality Act or parole-in-place depending on their situation, to be able to continue to stay with their family here.

Gulick deferred to Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan (Ind-MP), who was in the audience.

Sablan said he introduced H.R. 1466 to help four groups of people, including parents of minor U.S. citizen children.

“These four groups of people are the only ones I can help at this time. What do they want? To include everyone and not have the bill passed, or focus on those groups and have the bill passed? If they don’t like what I do, then maybe I’ll stop what I do, withdraw H.R. 1466 and not be able to help anyone,” Sablan told Saipan Tribune.

Gulick, during a news briefing yesterday, said they cannot change the rules or laws for those who will be out of status after Nov. 27. Those include those who won’t have employers and are not eligible for H1B or other INA visas.

“We expect them just like any other person who doesn’t have a job here, is not a citizen, to leave,” Gulick told reporters.

USCIS regional media manager Therese Sebrechts said she was able to speak to many of the children on Wednesday night at the multi-purpose center. She said many of them “were under the impression that their parents had to leave no matter what.”

For instance, there was one brother and sister who came to her and asked, “Why do our parents have to leave?”

Sebrechts said she found out that the children’s father is employed, and whose employer will apply for a CW-1 status for him, while the mother can be petitioned for CW-2.

There were an estimated 200 adults and children at the venue on Wednesday night.

Rabby Syed, president of the United Workers Movement-NMI, said he will make sure that the children’s voices, as well as of their parents, will be heard in Washington, D.C. where he is headed today.

Syed said they will ask President Barack Obama to grant parole in place for long-term foreign workers in the CNMI until Congress decides on the U.S. Interior’s recommendations to grant improved immigration status to these workers.