CNMI to feds: Compensate us

Thousands stand to be allowed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to remain in the CNMI without the ability to be legally and gainfully employed for “at least four months,” and this is among the Fitial administration and lawmakers’ major concerns during a closed-door meeting of the Strategic Economic Development Council on Capital Hill yesterday morning.

The Fitial administration, particularly Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos, asked USCIS district director David Gulick whether the federal government would provide funding to the CNMI government to accommodate these unemployed aliens who may be eligible for parole until Dec. 31, 2012.

This particular type of funding the administration is asking for is similar to the so-called Compact-Impact, wherein the U.S. government reimburses the CNMI and other U.S. areas for expenses related to hosting citizens from Freely Associated States.

Rep. Ray Palacios (Cov-Saipan) said if only the federal government could provide “some kind of funding to accommodate the jobless aliens, it will make a big difference in this economy.”

Gulick said, however, that he’s not in a position to respond to this inquiry.

Press secretary Angel Demapan said Gulick could only offer responses that center on the processes of Commonwealth-only worker petitions and parole applications.

He said a major concern is that Gulick indicated that those who will be eligible for the one-year parole “are no longer allowed to continue working after Nov. 27.”

“They may apply for employment authorization, but Gulick said the chance of getting an approval to start working may take at least four months. This is definitely a concern for the local government as thousands now stand to be allowed to remain in the CNMI without the ability to be legally and gainfully employed for at least four months,” Demapan told Saipan Tribune.

Vice speaker Felicidad Ogumoro (Cov-Saipan), who asked the most questions at the meeting, wanted to find out USCIS’ plan for these aliens who are unemployed and yet are allowed to remain in the CNMI.

Gulick said the grant of parole is on a case-by-case basis.

There were also questions as to how soon the Department of Homeland Security or its component agencies could deport illegal aliens so as not to further drain the CNMI’s limited resources in the areas of health, public safety, and other services.

Lawmakers echoed the Fitial administration’s concerns about USCIS’ decision to grant parole until Dec. 31, 2012, on a case-by-case basis, to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and certain stateless individuals.

Rep. Edmund Villagomez (Cov-Saipan), chair of the House Committee on Commerce and Tourism, said if many of the eligible aliens granted one-year parole are unemployed, they will only be a burden to the CNMI.

He said he recognizes the important contributions of foreign workers to the CNMI, but he’s concerned about those who can’t find jobs just like U.S. workers because of the bad state of the economy.

“If there’s another year granted, people will kind of hang around and just like what the governor said, become a ‘burden.’ It’s also not fair to nonresidents who are legally employed. I guess it’s about fairness and in a way you add another year of ‘unfairness,’” he said.

Villagomez said when he first heard about a one-year parole, he considered it as added time for the Department of Homeland Security to “fix” the regulations.

“In my opinion, they took over immigration and they haven’t done a good job and look at how much of a mess this has become. They’re disorganized,” said Villagomez, one of the lawmakers at the SEDC meeting.

Palacios said his main concern are U.S. citizens with foreign spouses who can’t afford the costly processing of green card for their spouses.

“Many of them, at least the people I know, are poor so they can’t afford to pay $2,000 to $3,000 to process their husband or wife’s green card. Yet you have jobless aliens you want to stay here for another year,” he said.

Palacios said his final take on the immigration is: “The U.S. Congress rushed to pass PL 110-229. They’re unprepared to entertain both sides, especially the CNMI side. Now they’re extending parole because they are not prepared to handle aliens. If they’re prepared, they wouldn’t have to offer one-year parole,” he said.

Both Palacios and Villagomez separately said they have not decided whether to support Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s plan to go the route of stopping USCIS from granting a one-year parole by filing a lawsuit.

Demapan said this matter is still under legal advisement.

Rep. Tony Sablan (R-Saipan), a former CNMI immigration director, said he considers USCIS’ one-year parole program an “administrative amnesty.”

“I can understand why the governor is upset. This is contrary to what they have been saying all along when they came out here to explain federalization, that USCIS or DHS will enforce the law,” he said.

Fitial, in speaking out against Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan’s H.R. 1466, said the measure masquerades as a bill that will keep families together but in reality is a large-scale amnesty for aliens.

He said the bill provides a direct route to U.S. citizenship that would create an estimated 11,000 new U.S. citizens in the Commonwealth within the next 10 years—virtually all of whom are adults and would be voters—at a time when the current U.S. citizen population of Chamorro and Carolinian ancestry is estimated to decline.

Fitial, in an interview, said he wants USCIS to rid the CNMI of illegal aliens, many of them he said could be given one-year parole by USCIS.

Sablan also said the application of the “Morton memo” in the CNMI has “softened” the federal government’s stand against illegal aliens.

“They [federal government] set the time frame for the takeover, set the time frame for the expiration of the umbrella permits. In a way, as a former law enforcement officer, I would expect that they would enforce the intent of the law,” he added.

Richard Pierce, executive director of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce and also present at the SEDC meeting, said USCIS’ latest figure as of Nov. 22 or 23 was that there were only roughly 2,700 foreign workers petitioned for CW status by their employers. USCIS is expected to release the latest figure this week.

This is only a small fraction of the 13,399 foreign workers who are “potentially eligible” for CW status under the final worker rule published in September.

“Where are the rest of the foreign workers estimated to be here?” Pierce asked.

He said the number of people available to work far exceeds the number of available jobs.

He said it is within USCIS’ domain to address concerns about people still in the CNMI but who are not supposed to be here anymore.

“We’re not comfortable commenting how that should be handled. Based upon the numbers we received [yesterday], there’s just too few jobs available for available people,” he said.

USCIS has yet to issue instructions how to apply for the one-year parole.

Rabby Syed, president of the United Workers Movement-NMI, said there are many individuals not covered by USCIS’ offer of one-year parole and not covered by HR 1466, especially long-term legal aliens without U.S. citizen children.

He said despite the end of the Occupy USCIS vigil, they will continue to press DHS to grant parole for all legal aliens as of Nov. 27, 2011, until such time that Congress acts to grant improved immigration status or grant “green card, pathway to citizenship” to long-term guest workers in the CNMI.