In a memorandum submitted to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs, Willens on behalf of Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, said there is also no data in the Department of the Interior report that bears the number of aliens in the CNMI who have minor U.S. citizen children on May 8, 2008.
But David Gootnik of the Government Accountability Office told the subcommittee that Interior’s 2010 report and the 2005 CNMI study indicated that 3,000 to 4,000 foreigners will benefit from the measure, which will grant CNMI-only status to certain aliens.
Citing the 2005 Household Income And Expenditure Survey, or HIES, Willens said of the 32,749 nonresidents who entered the CNMI from 1980 to 2005, 19,308 were estimated to be females.
Of this number, 14,977 were from the Philippines alone, 7,089 of whom were females, he said.
In Oct. 2005 when the number of Filipinos had grown to 20,167, Willens said this group of aliens produced 4,121 U.S. citizen children. More than half of them were between 30 and 50 years old, he added.
He said the HIES report showed that 4,606 Filipino males who were 15 years and older, and 4,284 Filipino females, got married in 2005.
He said many of the persons in the 15 to 19 age groups in 1985 would have reached the age of 21 by May 8, 2008.
“If we focus on the three younger groups and use the differential of 500 births per year attributable to alien residents in the NMI, the result would… support a figure of 7,500 U.S. citizen children with alien parents,” Willens said.
“If you assume that ‘tourist babies’ may have accounted for 220 rather than 120 births each year during the period, the result would be 6,000 minor with alien parents who lived in the NMI,” he added.
He said from 2005 to 2008, more than 1,000 babies were born to alien parents.
According to Willens, to account for alien parents of U.S. citizen children who may have left the islands, the government used a multiplier of 1.8 to estimate the number of parents.
He said applying this multiplier to the estimated number of over 7,000 U.S. children who could take advantage of H.R. 1466 indicates a total of 13,602.
According to Sablan, however, many nonresidents have already left the islands due to the worsening economy.
