Obama urged to protect 16K legal aliens in NMI

A major group mostly of foreign workers is asking President Barack Obama to use his administrative power to protect some 16,000 legal aliens in the CNMI, until such time that Congress or other executive agencies grant these nonresidents a more permanent immigration status.

United Workers Movement-NMI president Rabby Syed wrote a letter to Obama, asking the president to grant legal nonresidents “parole-in place status with authorization to seek employment.”

Syed also asks that such parole-in-place status “shall qualify them for employment-based visa applications.”

The letter will be hand-delivered by former Rota teacher and now Florida-based human rights activist Wendy Doromal to the White House this week, Syed told Saipan Tribune. Doromal also posted a copy of Syed’s letter on her blog.

The letter is supported by over 7,000 nonresidents and supporters who signed a petition asking for a parole-in-place status.

“While we are hopeful that permanent status and a pathway to citizenship for legal aliens in the CNMI may be included in future national comprehensive immigration reform legislation, we plead with you not to wait to grant relief,” Syed said in a three-page letter dated June 1.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan, when asked for comment yesterday, said Syed and Doromal could do what they want to do.

“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said in an interview at the Philippines’ 113th Independence Day celebration at the Civic Center in Susupe yesterday.

Sablan has a pending bill, H.R. 1466, which proposes a “CNMI-only resident status” for four specific groups of individuals, including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, and those who won’t be covered by the transitional worker regulations.

“If it [worker regulations] doesn’t get released at all [by Nov. 28], we don’t need anyone to tell DHS what to do. They will not deport anyone here unless they are criminals,” Sablan said yesterday.

He reiterated that the CNMI-only transitional worker regulations should have been issued a long time ago. He said he has not heard of anything that indicates these regulations won’t be released before Nov. 28, 2011.

Nov. 27, 2011, is the last day of the two-year period for the CNMI to transition to federalized immigration. After that, everyone who does not have some immigration status issued by the U.S. government—like the Commonwealth-only worker status—will be “out of status” and subject to deportation.

Syed said copies of his letter will also be sent to the U.S. Congress, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Insular Affairs Tony M. Babauta.

In his letter, Syed said a parole-in-place status is one of the options cited in a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Alejandro Mayorkas regarding administrative relief options that could be exercised in the absence of a comprehensive reform legislation to promote family unity, foster economic growth, and remove the threat of removal for certain individuals and groups present in the U.S. without authorization.

He said for over 20 years and until the federal government took control of CNMI immigration on Nov. 28, 2009, the Commonwealth was allowed to manage a guest worker program that permitted alien workers to renew their job contracts and live in the CNMI year after year but denied them any opportunity to adjust to permanent status.

“They established roots in the CNMI that grew deeper and stronger each year that their stay was extended, but their status as temporary guest workers remained the same,” he said.

Evelyn Buen, 58, said she has been working as a cook on Saipan for 20 years, and hopes that she will be able to obtain a more permanent immigration status. For two decades, she has been earning minimum wage in the CNMI.

“I would like to be able to stay here. This has become my home,” she said in an interview yesterday.

In Syed’s letter, he asked Obama to recognize that the unique and urgent needs of the CNMI’s legal, documented aliens need not and should not be delayed by ongoing partisan politics and a raging debate over undocumented workers in the U.S.

“It is within your power now to provide protection to legal aliens who have dedicated their lives to building and developing this U.S. Commonwealth,” Syed said, adding that the CNMI legal aliens are part of the U.S. Social Security system.

Besides helping to stabilize the CNMI’s labor pool and keep families intact, a parole-in-place status “would provide a measure of justice for the thousands of people who have been cheated of their wages, victimized by illegal recruiters, scammers, and unscrupulous employers, and suffered a range of labor, civil, and human rights abuses in the CNMI,” said Syed.

The U.S. Labor Ombudsman’s Office said in 2008 that a total of $6.1 million in unpaid judgments are still owed to thousands of alien workers in the CNMI.

“Mr. President, please restore the American dream to the 16,000 legal aliens who have made this U.S. Commonwealth their home,” Syed told Obama.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, however, wants the CNMI-issued umbrella permits to be extended for as long as foreign workers are needed, instead of granting them permanent immigration status.