“Nonresidents should recognize the fact that today more members of the U.S. Congress have heard about the situation in the CNMI,” she said.
She said there’s no reason to lose hope and guest workers should have confidence that Congress and the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and the Interior “will act in a way that will benefit every person who calls the CNMI their home, whether resident or nonresident.”
Guest worker advocates are asking the federal government to improve the immigration status of the CNMI’s long-term guest workers.
The visit last month to the CNMI of the congressional delegation led by U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.V. and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, was very encouraging, Doromal said.
“The successful peaceful assembly, prepared statements of the nonresidents and face-to-face meetings have been positively received by the Washington visitors,” she added.
She said it is very important that nonresidents are afforded an opportunity to express their concerns and views regarding their immigration status and the federalization of local immigration this November.
Nonresidents make up a huge and vital segment of the population of the CNMI, she added, but they are “disenfranchised and unrepresented.”
Doromal said it is difficult for guest workers to cope with the uncertainty of not knowing what the transitional federal guest worker program will look like.
She said a just and democratic federal guest worker program will allow long-term foreign workers to eventually become U.S. citizens.
“This is what we are requesting and hoping will be realized,” she added.
The former Rota teacher vowed to continue to advocate on behalf of the guest workers and all nonresidents in the CNMI to ensure that the U.S. Congress “moves quickly to take the just and moral step of granting long-term legal nonresidents permanent U.S. status and a pathway to citizenship.”
Doromal said it would be “devastating,” if U.S. citizen children of guest workers cannot achieve what their parents have been aspiring for — improved immigration status — when the federalization law is implemented in the CNMI.
