Fitial attends governors’ association meeting

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial is traveling to the mainland United States on official business.

The governor left shortly before his taped address aired on a local television show on Tuesday evening. In the broadcast, Fitial announced his administration will sue the U.S. government over the immigration “federalization” law.

Fitial will be out of the Commonwealth for 10 days, he said in his TV address.

Press secretary Charles P. Reyes Jr. said the main item in the governor’s itinerary is the annual meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in Wyoming. The meeting will be held June 29 to July 1, 2008.

According to the WGA website, governors from Kansas to California, including Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas, will come together to discuss climate change policy initiatives and adaptive strategies, improving management of their water resources, the future of energy resources, and preserving critical wildlife corridors.

The governor will also attend a meeting of the Pacific Basin Development Council, a regional group that supports cooperation and development among the four U.S. jurisdictions in the Pacific: American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, and the Northern Marianas.

On Tuesday evening, Fitial said he will challenge in federal courts the recently passed law having Washington take control of local immigration. He reported that his special legal counsel, Howard Willens, has drafted a complaint, and a team of U.S.-based attorneys has been hired to review it.

The governor said the complaint will focus on the labor provisions of the legislation which are not part of federal immigration laws. It will also outline the economic damage that the administration says the new law has caused, and is expected to cause, to the Commonwealth.

“[We] believe that the U.S. Congress cannot impose unique federal controls on a single community of U.S. citizen and its workforce as this law does,” Fitial said.

He also touted the accomplishments of the law firm he has hired to help the CNMI government’s lawyers in preparing the lawsuit. Jenner & Block, a national firm with offices in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., “has a distinguished record for its practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and specializes in complex litigation and constitutional law,” Fitial said.

The Jenner & Block lawyers working on the federalization lawsuit are David DeBruin, William Hohengarten, and Sharmila Sohoni.