U.S. Rep. Daniel Burton said he is ready to join the CNMI in petitioning the federal government not to appeal a court ruling acknowledging that \u201cstateless\u201d individuals in the Commonwealth are U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n
Burton, who had a two-day visit to the CNMI, said that, although he was not personally aware about the recent Ninth Circuit ruling, he would be willing to join Gov. Juan N. Babauta in requesting U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft from appealing the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll do that. I think that they should have that status. They are kind of caught in between. And I\u2019ll be happy to work on that. We\u2019ve been working on that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Right now, he said, the situation is \u201cwait-and-see\u201d amid a possible appeal of the decision.<\/p>\n
Burton said that his office has been working with the governor in preparing a bill granting the stateless individuals U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n
His chief of staff, Mark A. Walker, said the issue was also brought to the attention of California congressman Richard Pombo, whose committee recently approved the CNMI non-voting delegate to U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did bring the issue directly with congressman Pombo. Right now, our strategy is wait-and-see if this is going to be appealed. We stand ready to help,\u201d said Walker.<\/p>\n
The federal appellate court decision affirmed last month the U.S. citizenship of the stateless persons\u2014those born in the Northern Marianas between Jan. 9, 1978 to Nov. 3, 1986.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. Rep. Daniel Burton said he is ready to join the CNMI in petitioning the federal government not to appeal a court ruling acknowledging that \u201cstateless\u201d individuals in the Commonwealth are U.S. citizenship.<\/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-85166","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\/85166","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=85166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}