The U.S. Department of the Interior has been asked to draft the CNMI immigration legislation based on the 2001 Murkowski bill.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources made the request in a March 20, 2007 letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.
“We are pleased that the [Bush] administration has pledged to work with the committee and with the CNMI government as we develop legislation to extend federal immigration control to the CNMI with appropriate transition provisions and exemptions designed to meet the special circumstances and needs of the CNMI,” said Committee chair Jeff Bingaman and ranking member Pete Domenici.
“As the next step in this process, we are writing to request a drafting service from the Interior Department in recognition of your general administrative responsibilities for the territories of the United States, your role as chair of the Interagency Group on Insular Areas, and Deputy Assistant Secretary [David] Cohen's role as the President's special representative in consultations under Section 902 of the U.S.-CNMI Covenant,” they added.
In an interview yesterday, Cohen stressed the Senate is not obligated to introduce DOI's draft of the bill. Neither will the draft carry with it the endorsement of the administration.
“As you remember, the administration's testimony [during the Feb. 8, 2007 Senate oversight hearing] laid out a number of guidelines for any discussion of federalization. So since we set forth these principles, the Senate turned around and said, 'well, why don't you incorporate those principles and draft the bill?'” Cohen said.
“But the Senate can say, 'we don't like this product,' and introduce their own bill. It doesn't imply the administration will necessarily support what we draft. This is something we have been requested to provide as a service to Congress,” he added.
According to Bingaman and Domenici, the Interior Department could use the text of S. 507 from the 107th Congress as basis for the new draft.
Authored by former Sen. Frank Murkowski, S. 507 is the most recent bill extending federal immigration law to the Commonwealth. It is identical to S. 1052 as passed by the U.S. Senate during the 106th Congress.
The pair said the Interior Department could first revise any dates to reflect the six years that have passed since the bill was introduced and reported by the Senate Energy Committee, and re-designate the provisions relating to the former Immigration and Naturalization Service to reflect establishment of the Department of Homeland Security.
Then, DOI could further modify the text to incorporate recommendations made by the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs and the CNMI's Washington Representative Office during the Feb. 8, 2007 Senate oversight hearing, as well as further input from the Fitial administration and other CNMI government, business, and community leaders.
In addition, the ranking lawmakers requested that they be kept informed regarding the Covenant 902 talks that will take place between the federal and local governments on March 27-29, 2007.
Bingaman and Domenici gave DOI until Monday, April 30, 2007 to respond to their “time-sensitive” request, with a line-in/line-out revision of the base S. 507 text.
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