Irene Tantiado, Coalition of United Workers (NMI) president, said the 50-member Parents with Children Disabilities Association has recently joined the coalition to seek assistance.
The parents group is asking the CNMI government if it can ensure that the parents and children will stay together on island.
The job contracts of some of the parents may not be renewed, Tantiado said.
A mother and an official of the parents group, who requested anonymity, said if the parents are deported they will have to bring their children.
“The kids will no longer get the benefits they are getting in the CNMI,” the mother said. “A lot of these parents did not get renewed. They were only given temporary working authorization by the Department of Labor.”
In the CNMI, children with disabilities are provided with special care programs such as occupational therapy, Medicaid, food stamps and teacher aid.
These parents cannot afford to take care of their children with disabilities in the Philippines, the mother said.
“As U.S. citizens, these kids are supposed to be entitled to the benefits provided by the federal government,” she said.
Human rights advocate Wendy Doromal said parents of U.S. citizen children with disabilities should not be “exiled.”
“The hardships to the children and long term nonresident worker parents is the main reason I do not support any guest worker program that does not provide a pathway to citizenship, whether that program is in the CNMI or elsewhere,” Doromal said in an e-mail.
She said granting long-term guest workers a green card status “would not only be just, but would solve the problem of the CNMI having the trained and stable workforce that it needs.”
These parents, she added, have “legitimate concerns about the future health and well-being of their children if they are forced to return to their homelands where their children will no longer have the health benefits and care that they currently receive in the CNMI.”
She said she has already informed officials in Washington, D.C. about the concerns of these children’s parents.
