Hence, DOJ added, the CNMI’s case challenging the federalization law should be dismissed.
The DOJ lawyers, who are representing the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Labor, also noted that separating immigration laws from labor policies contradicts the nation’s policy to have access to domestic employment opportunities.
“The assertion that ‘immigration’ laws do not include nonresident labor and foreign workforce regulations ignores large sections of the [Immigration and Naturalization Act] and is contradicted by two of the fundamental purposes of immigration law: to ensure that U.S. citizens have access to domestic employment opportunities, and to protect U.S. citizens from wage depression resulting from the presence of inexpensive nonresident labor,” the DOJ said in its 10-page reply to the CNMI’s supplemental motion for an emergency injunctive relief.
The CNMI’s latest motion filed on Nov. 2 said DHS violated the U.S. Administrative Procedure Act by announcing that the interim final regulations on the transitional worker program will take effect on Nov. 28, the day the federalization law will be implemented.
This doesn’t give the CNMI ample time to make comments, its lawyers said.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Paul Friedman will hear oral arguments on Nov. 23.
The DOJ admits the interim final rule in question “obviates the argument that the CNMI’s claims of injury are not helped by the absence of implementing regulations.”
“But the existence of such regulations does nothing to address the inherently speculative nature of the CNMI’s claim that the [federalization law] will cause ‘devastating, perhaps fatal’ economic injury, resulting from, among other things, a purportedly inevitable out-migration of U.S. citizens from the CNMI; from a decrease in foreign investment and business expansion; from a decrease of up to 50 percent in the CNMI GDP [a figure based solely on a Government Accountability Office report that disclaims its own predictive value]; and from a reduction in revenues from fees that lead to a decline in the quality of public services that ‘will injure’ the people of the CNMI,” the DOJ added.
The CNMI said the transitional worker program would remove local control over two-thirds of the CNMI’s private sector workforce and result in “devastating economic consequences.”
But according to the DOJ, “The Act itself mandates the implementation of a CNMI-only worker permitting system and specifies that the number of CNMI-only permits shall be reduced during the period of transition to zero at the end of the transition period, but which transition period can be extended for five-year periods at the discretion of the secretary of labor.”
It added, “This court should properly conclude that Congress properly exercised its authority in…applying federal immigration law, including the transitional work permit system, to the CNMI. It should deny the CNMI’s motion for a preliminary injunction and grant the United States’ motion to dismiss.”
