“Your request for participation by the CNMI in the rulemaking process relating to the federalization of immigration in the CNMI is being discussed. [Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne] is aware and shares your concern that the application of the federal immigration law should be in the CNMI’s and the nation’s best interest,” stated a letter from the Interior to Speaker Arnold I. Palacios, R-Saipan.
Nik Pula, the director of the Office of Insular Affairs, signed the letter on behalf of Doug Domenech, Interior’s deputy secretary of staff and acting deputy assistant secretary for insular affairs.
Palacios, Senate President Pete P. Reyes, R-Saipan, and Rep. Diego T. Benavente, R-Saipan and the chairman of the House Committee on U.S. and Foreign Affairs, visited Washington, D.C. in August.
Pula and other Interior officials met with them. Pula himself visited the CNMI last month.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the main federal agency to administer the immigration system in the CNMI, is already establishing its office on Saipan.
Several vehicles marked with Homeland Security plates are already roaming the island.
Once the federalization law takes effect on June 1, 2009, all documented foreign workers will be treated as transitional guest workers.
According to the Aug. 2008 report of the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, the CNMI-only work permits will be implemented for two years in consideration of the transition phase.
Afterward, the federal guest worker program, which has stricter rules, will apply.
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial has filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. to prevent the federalization law’s implementation.
He is scheduled to hold a cabinet meeting today and his special legal counsel, Howard P. Willens, is expected to give a brief report about the status of the lawsuit.
The governor said their interpretation of the federalization law indicates that by 2014 the CNMI should have “zero” foreign workers.
The federal government, however, insists that the law allows the islands to host guest workers at increments of five years more from 2014.
