Dekada renews push for permanent residency

The Dekada Movement is asking the newly installed Fitial administration to help in the granting of improved immigration status or permanent residency to long-term nonresident aliens in the CNMI.

In particular, the group wants the administration to support its quest for U.S. green cards and to help in the introduction and enactment of a local law granting eligible “alien residents” permanent residency in the CNMI.

In a March 25 letter to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, Dekada, which claims to have 3,000 members, said it recognizes that the CNMI’s elected leaders “have the power to implement solutions that would do much to address our well-founded status concerns.”

The administration, it said, could undertake actions to recognize “the important and unique place of long residency” of nonresidents “by tailoring the CNMI’s immigration and labor laws to better fit the civil, legal, and immigration status of our members and their families to their contribution, role, and ties to these islands.”

Dekada president Bonifacio Sagana said it does not necessarily mean amendment of the Nonresident Workers Act but the enactment of a separate law on improved immigration status.

“They could create a law granting permanently residency. It’s not really for a green card but permanent residency,” Sagana said.

He said the local government has done it before when it enacted a law granting permanent residency to the so-called stateless children.

At the same time, Dekada said “U.S. lawful permanent residency remains a good solution and a very worthwhile goal.

“It is also a goal we would ask you and other CNMI elected leaders to support, because in truth, lawful U.S. permanent residency can be in the interest of the indigenous island population just as it is beneficial to long-term alien residents,” said the group.

Dekada consists of nonresidents who have been in the CNMI for five to 20 years.

In a visit to Saipan last year, Department of the Interior deputy secretary-designee P. Lynn Scarlett said the agency wants “to understand the issue” relating to Dekada.

“We’re more interested in trying to understand the issue, understand the perspective of the CNMI government on that, make sure that the CNMI government’s view is incorporated into any discussion that may occur,” said Scarlett.

She said that Dekada’s goal of improved immigration status in the CNMI is beyond the DOI’s jurisdiction, but she said that Interior could help bring it up with other agencies.

“Obviously, the immigration issue is larger than the department. They are primarily driven by other agencies. We work with them. We dialogue,” she said.

For his part, DOI deputy assistant secretary David Cohen said that, while he has great sympathy for Dekada members, they should not be misled that their long stay would somehow improve their chances of becoming U.S. citizens.

He said that nonresidents’ primary purpose in the CNMI is to work.

Washington Rep. Pete A. Tenorio had agreed, adding that only the U.S. Congress can grant U.S. citizenship, but not permanent residency status to aliens.

Tenorio said, though, that Dekada may have valid concerns in pushing for improved immigration status for its members and called on local leaders to meet with the group to address their concerns.

“The members of this group may have valid concerns about their employment status within the CNMI, and we must acknowledge that many in this group are valued employees who have contributed to the success of many local businesses,” Tenorio said.