‘Local, national immigration should not be mixed’

Local business leaders believe the Commonwealth’s CNMI-Only Transitional Worker program should not be tied to the national debate on immigration.

Not too many people in Washington, D.C. know about the CNMI’s immigration history and the CNMI should educate the U.S. Congress about this matter, said Northern Marianas Business Alliance Corp. member Marian Aldan-Pierce.

“The immigration issue [of the Commonwealth] today should not be mixed with national immigration because the latter is talking about security from illegal immigrants and the issue with CWs is about people that were invited to come here and be with us,” she said.

This argument was expressed during last week’s Social Economic Development Council meeting on Capital Hill and came a day after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced it will be cutting 3,000 slots from the CW-1 program at a time when the islands’ economy is improving.

“Majority of guest workers in the CNMI are here at the invitation of the government and business people. They entered legally and the purpose of their stay is legitimate,” Aldan-Pierce pointed out.

That may sound elementary but the difference between CNMI immigration and U.S. immigration is something that needs to be discussed, Aldan-Pierce said.

“I do not think that the U.S would do anything to harm our economy. And our economy includes people that we invited to come here, which is why we have an economy in the first place,” she said. “We should remind them of who we are and why we are here. We should not be muddled up in the national immigration today because it is very different.”

Change of status

Another SEDC member, lawyer Maya Kara, pointed out what could have been if the status of longterm workers had already been enhanced.

“If you recall, when the federalization bill was first proposed, one of the major elements of that was to enhance the status of long-term workers. If we had done that then or achieved that, we would not be here and I am wondering if it is still possible to talk about that—to really go down with the people that we really need with good employers who comply with the law,” she said.

NMBAC president Alex Sablan said that there hasn’t been political will to talk about immigration at the national front, let alone in the local front.

“Not to say we are not going after the idea. We talked about this even in the last round of the idea of H.R. 339. But the political will was not there in Washington, D.C. to present an immigration front for status in the Commonwealth,” he said.

“We are adding a provision that we believe would be palatable for some type of status and that has been proposed by [Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan] and his group to extend CNMI-only status to foreign national workers. This way, they can remain in the Commonwealth to work for a period as CNMI residents and not be able to move to Guam or the mainland. The eventual scenario is that down the road, they will be able to seek further status like permanent residency or green card,” he added.

Currently, the NMBAC believes there is still an opportunity to lessen the cuts outlined by USCIS and is adding amendments to immigration provisions that would be more viable to the CNMI economy, which they intend to lobby in Congress in the coming days.