Mohammad Feroj Ahmed filed the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands through his attorney Mark Hanson.
Hanson is asking a jury trial.
According to documents they filed at the federal court, Ahmed married Azmery Sultana on Aug. 5, 2008 in Bangladesh.
Thereafter, he worked to process her papers to be able to visit Saipan. On February 3, 2009, Ahmed received a reply from the Office of the Attorney General denying his request to grant Sultana a discretionary waiver to be able to visit Saipan.
A waiver is needed to facilitate the visit of any citizen from Bangladesh to the CNMI because the country has been on the list of excluded countries allowed to enter the islands since 2004.
Hanson said Baka told his client “it was not in the best interest of the commonwealth that the exclusion be waived” but failed to clarify why Sultana’s request for a waiver was unacceptable or if the application was somehow deficient.
Further, Hanson said Baka “somewhat insultingly and wholly irrelevantly suggests that Mr. Ahmed and his wife apply to the United States Department of State for a visa — a visa that would, presumably, allow Azmery Sultana to travel to the United States, but not necessarily to the commonwealth.”
Hanson said Grey further inflicted insults to Ahmed through his statement: “The whole Federal Ombudsman’s Office worked for the federalization and now the federal government cannot address your problem? You are part of that office, they wanted federal takeover and that happened, so the federal government should take care of your problem.”
Despite these discouraging statements, Ahmed still appealed Baka’s decision. No response was given to date.
Hanson said Ahmed’s request was denied because of his involvement to workers rights movement in the past, including the filing of a labor case against Baka’s wife.
“Notwithstanding the arguable illegality of the Immigration Regulations in the first place, the defendants’ actions described above, denying Mr. Ahmed’s wife a 804 (C) waiver to allow her to enter the commonwealth to be united with Mr. Ahmed, were no doubt in retaliation for, among other of Mr. Ahmed’s constitutionally protected activities,” said Hanson.
“Mr. Ahmed’s long standing vocal criticism of the plight of the contract workers in the commonwealth, his criticism of the commonwealth government’s consistently abhorrent reaction to deteriorating labor and immigration problems and his vocal support for federal takeover,” he added.
