By Gemma Q. Casas
Variety News Staff

THE commonwealth’s first governor says it’s about time that the federal government takes control of the CNMI’s labor and immigration policies because local leaders, both past and present, are not capable of handling their own affairs.
“I’m for it,” said former Gov. Carlos S. Camacho when asked if he supports the extension of federal minimum wage and immigration laws to the islands. “We haven’t shown ourselves capable of handling our issues, particularly labor and immigration.”
He added, “I blame our leaderships plus the business people for being too selfish and too greedy.”
A medical doctor, Camacho won the first CNMI gubernatorial election in Nov. 1977. The Democratic candidate narrowly defeated his first cousin, businessman Jose C. “Joeten” Tenorio of the Territorial — now the Republican — Party.
According to Camacho, the islands’ Covenant with the U.S. allows for the eventual federalization of local labor and immigration laws.
“Federalization,” he added, “will stabilize the situation in the CNMI.”
There will be more investors interested in the islands because the CNMI will be more secure and will have stable labor and immigration rules.
Business leaders and the administration maintain that the commonwealth should continue to have control over labor and immigration.
Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Villagomez has argued that under the terms of the Covenant, “immigration is the responsibility of the commonwealth government.”
But according to former Ambassador F. Haydn Williams, the head of the U.S. team that negotiated the drafting of the Covenant with the NMI panel, local control of immigration was intended to be only “transitional.”