“I doubt that it would offer any form of ‘security’ or any real ‘benefit’ to the guest workers, but it would most likely not harm them either if that [language] was removed,” she said in her e-mail to Variety.
She said she consulted lawyers about the umbrella permit and was told that requiring the guest workers to agree to pay for their own repatriation and medical care is “illegal.”
“It is against P.L. 15-108,” she added, referring to CNMI labor law. “I do not feel that a document that is not legal should be presented to anyone to sign. If [Labor] or the administration wants to change the labor law then change the law, but don’t ask foreign contract workers to sign documents that can harm them or is not in compliance with the labor law.”
Attorney Deanne Siemer, Labor’s volunteer legal adviser, earlier asked for Doromal’s “insights” regarding a “planning document related to foreign workers.”
Doromal said she declined Siemer’s invitation “because of the ground rules, the vagueness of who the specific participants were, and the vagueness of the report’s purpose.”
She said she doesn’t trust Siemer due to the lawyer’s “questionable dealings with Rep. Tina Sablan, her unwarranted letters and remarks criticizing the Ombudsman Office, her letters and reports she has written on behalf of the Department of Labor, and her stand on issues concerning the guest workers.”
