“It’s about time,” said Sablan, who has been urging the department to get the regulations completed since they were shot down in 2009 following a lawsuit by the commonwealth government.
“We still cannot see the draft regulations themselves. But at least we know they are now moving forward. DHS isn’t holding on to them anymore. The department has sent the regulations out for comment by OMB and other federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, Interior, and Labor, that have an interest in CNMI immigration.”
Sablan gave credit to Dr. John Fleming, R-La. and chairman of the House subcommittee with responsibilities for insular affairs, for the DHS action.
“For some time Chairman Fleming and I have discussed the need to bring DHS and other federal agencies in for a hearing on implementation of federal immigration. While there is no official notification of a date yet, I can say that federal agencies have been alerted that they are going to be facing the subcommittee in the very near future.
“When they come before the subcommittee, those agencies want to look like they are doing their job. DHS wants to be able to say, ‘we’re not the problem; we sent the commonwealth-only transitional worker regs to OMB weeks ago.’”
Sablan is now ranking member, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee, and he publically raised the issue of the regulations with Fleming at his very first hearing as ranking member on April 1 of this year.
Fleming acknowledged that Homeland Security had been “remiss in meeting its deadlines to publish many of the implementing regulations,” and agreed on the need for a hearing.
More recently, the Saipan Chamber of Commerce has also become more outspoken about the long delay in issuing the worker regulations. “I think that has definitely helped, too,” Sablan said.
As part of his effort to prompt the department into action, the congressman quoted chamber president Doug Brennan in a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives last month. “It’s putting the brakes on our economy,” were Brennan’s words.
Kilili added a caution to the department regarding its funding in the same floor speech. “As we think about funding Homeland Security today,” he said, “Homeland Security should be explaining why it isn’t doing its job issuing these long overdue regulations for the Northern Mariana Islands.” (The complete statement is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CcwZs8tY9W8.)
The long-awaited worker regulations will provide a visa classification for non-U.S. citizens, who work in the Northern Marianas and who are not eligible for any other U.S. visa category. This will allow them to continue working in the commonwealth, but only in the commonwealth, through the immigration transition period, which ends in 2014.
Interim regulations were first published on October 27, 2009. But a suit by the commonwealth government resulted in a federal court order prohibiting their implementation.
Since then, workers and businesses in the Northern Marianas have been left in a state of uncertainty, guessing about what the rules for employment would be after the CNMI-issued visas most workers now have expire in November 2011.
Last year, in reply to a letter from Sablan and Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hi., and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.V., Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she expected the regulations to be out by the first quarter of 2011. But the final day of the quarter, March 31, came and went without any sign of the regulations.
“We were told that the secretary had said she ‘expected’ to have the regulations out by March 31, and that she just hadn’t meet her ‘expectation.’ It was incredibly frustrating,” Sablan said.
But the very next day Sablan got a public commitment from Fleming to bring DHS before the Insular Affairs Subcommittee for a hearing.
“You have to be persistent, if you want to get Washington to act,” Sablan said. “You can’t get discouraged; and you can’t give up.I will not give up!”
The notice of the submission of the regulations to the Office of Budget and Management for review can be found at http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201010&RIN=1615-AB76
