Veteran U.S. Rep. George Miller has not changed his mind on the need to fully extend the U.S. Immigration\u2019s reach to the CNMI. This time, he said the threat of international terrorism calls for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes no sense to me that anyone should be able to enter any jurisdiction of the U.S. with anything less than the tightest security we would require of someone entering New York or Los Angeles,\u201d said Miller in a Sept. 29 statement on the bill calling for the CNMI representation in Congress. He supports the passage of the proposed measure.<\/p>\n
While he acknowledged that reforms have been made affecting labor and immigration, he said he \u201cwould prefer to see more change in the CNMI coming from this Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn particular, I believe we should, in this era of terrorism and border security, fully extend the coverage of U.S. immigration law to the CNMI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Miller said that the CNMI \u201csits out there as a largely unregulated point of entry, with the flag of the U.S. flying but the immigration laws of the U.S. not applying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller, a Democrat from California who has been highly critical of labor and immigration practices in the CNMI for many years, credited Gov. Juan N. Babauta for \u201cmajor improvements in the integrity of the CNMI bureaucracy, tightening of labor law enforcement, and improved coordination with various federal agencies to ensure reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the Babauta administration, he said that agreements on anti-discrimination policy have been executed, new labor regulations approved, new refugees rules promulgated, and that the Legislature is considering tough new legislation on anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling involving workers.<\/p>\n
He further said that the Immigration and Labor departments have been separated, and technological improvements in both departments would greatly increase the government\u2019s ability to monitor who enters the CNMI and for what purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese improvements are more important than ever in the post 9\/11 world since, unwisely, federal immigration standards still do not apply to the CNMI,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Veteran U.S. Rep. George Miller has not changed his mind on the need to fully extend the U.S. Immigration\u2019s reach to the CNMI. This time, he said the threat of international terrorism calls for it.<\/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-84463","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\/84463","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=84463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}