Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio expressed optimism that the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will consider in its forthcoming report the CNMI’s strong stance against the legislation that will extend federal immigration laws to the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
He said he is not sure as to when the committee will send out information on the status of Senate Bill 1052 sponsored by Chairman Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and two other ranking Democratic members.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t heard anything from the committee whether they are coming out with a report right away,” the governor told reporters last week. “If the committee comes out with a report, we are hoping and praying that some of our concerns that we raised will be taken into consideration.”<\/p>\n
Tenorio, along with other government officials and representatives from the private sector, appeared at the hearing conducted by the panel last Sept. 14 in Washington D.C. to gather inputs on the bipartisan measure.<\/p>\n
They had opposed the plan to enforce the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act in the CNMI, noting its devastating consequence on the island’s economy and its ability to control its growth.<\/p>\n
The island government submitted a subsequent position paper 10 days after the hearing, reiterating its opposition to the bill as Murkowski had asked Tenorio to comment on its key provisions.<\/p>\n
“I am not sure whether the committee is coming out with a report or whether to approve (the legislation). I don’t know when it is going to take place,” said the governor.<\/p>\n
The panel, which deals with island issues, is expected to release its recommendations soon based on the comments from both the CNMI and federal officials, which will determine whether S. 1052 will reach the Senate floor for action.<\/p>\n
This is one of seven measures filed in Congress which will seek to turn local immigration, minimum wage and custom standards over to federal control due to allegations that CNMI has promoted dependency on foreign manpower and failed to stem labor abuses.<\/p>\n
Island leaders have pleaded against these attempts, saying they have implemented reforms to correct past misdeeds.<\/p>\n
While acknowledging the package of labor and immigration reforms put in place by the Tenorio administration over the last two years, Murkowski has said these efforts still showed limitations in CNMI’s ability to handle these functions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio expressed optimism that the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will consider in its forthcoming report the CNMI’s strong stance against the legislation that will extend federal immigration laws to the Commonwealth.<\/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-48324","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\/48324","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=48324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}