Tony M. Babauta, the assistant U.S. Interior secretary for Insular Affairs, said yesterday that there\u2019s currently no legislation that considers the department\u2019s April 2010 recommendation to grant long-term foreign workers in the CNMI an improved immigration status. Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said that nonresidents should stop hoping that they will be given improved status.<\/p>\n
Babauta said \u201cthere\u2019s nothing from the [Obama] administration currently where we would propose legislation to address that particular issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some 18 months have passed since Interior submitted its recommendation to Congress on granting status to foreign workers who have been lawfully in the CNMI for at least five years.<\/p>\n
Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan\u2019s (Ind-MP) H.R. 1466, which seeks CNMI-only resident status for four groups of people, does not propose granting improved status to foreign workers as recommended by Interior.<\/p>\n
Babauta said that Interior carried out its mandate under U.S. Public Law 110-229 \u201cand beyond that, there wasn\u2019t any formal communication with Mr. Sablan to introduce or not to introduce legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The options that Interior recommended included conferring outright U.S. citizenship on these long-term aliens, a grant of permanent residency status leading to U.S. citizenship, and a grant of status similar to those given to citizens of Freely Associated States.<\/p>\n
[B]\u2018Stubborn\u2019[\/B]<\/p>\n
Fitial said that since the beginning, he believed Congress won\u2019t grant improved immigration status to foreigners in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. Congress is not stupid to entertain a few thousands [in the CNMI] and they\u2019re fighting over 12 million over there [mainland]. That\u2019s very basic. But nobody wants to believe me\u2026so now we have a lot of not only illegal overstayers but also unemployed overstayers,\u201d Fitial said in an interview at the ribbon cutting for the new Hemodialysis Center in Garapan yesterday.<\/p>\n
Babauta was also in the CNMI yesterday for the new Hemodialysis Center\u2019s ribbon cutting.<\/p>\n
Fitial said \u201ca lot\u201d of nonresidents workers \u201cdon\u2019t have jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are here because they still believe there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Fitial said these individuals are \u201cstubborn.\u201d But he also acknowledged that there are many jobless aliens now going home.<\/p>\n
[B]Crunch time[\/B]<\/p>\n
It\u2019s now crunch time for unemployed nonresidents to find an employer that will file a Commonwealth-only worker status for them by Nov. 27.<\/p>\n
Without a job by that date, nonresidents will lose their status to remain in the CNMI and could face deportation unless they fall under those categories that are eligible for parole.<\/p>\n
They include CNMI permanent residents, immediate relatives of CNMI permanent residents, spouses, and children of deceased CNMI permanent residents, and immediate relatives of FAS citizens or those from Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia\u2019s Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and Yap.<\/p>\n
Many jobless nonresidents in the CNMI are still hoping that the federal government will grant them improved immigration status before Nov. 27 because they have worked in the CNMI for five, 10, 20, or more years.<\/p>\n
Many of them are from the Philippines.<\/p>\n
[B]Stable workforce[\/B]<\/p>\n
DHS\u2019 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published the final worker rule on Sept. 7 and spent two weeks holding public outreach sessions to help employers and employees understand the final regulations.<\/p>\n
Interior\u2019s Babauta lauded DHS for its efforts in educating employers and employees about the CW rule.<\/p>\n
Now that the final worker rule are released, Babauta hopes that the CNMI workforce will \u201cremain stable\u201d and lead to a turnaround in the CNMI economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tony M. Babauta, the assistant U.S. Interior secretary for Insular Affairs, said yesterday that there\u2019s currently no legislation that considers the department\u2019s April 2010 recommendation to grant long-term foreign workers in the CNMI an improved immigration status. Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said that nonresidents should stop hoping that they will be given improved status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}