Rabby Syed, the coalition’s acting president, said they relayed this request to the visiting U.S. congressional team led by Tony Babauta, staff director of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs.
“We will be happy if they will listen to our concerns,” Syed said.
During its meeting with the delegation, the coalition, he said, reiterated its request for an improved immigration status for long-term workers, including parents with U.S. citizen children with disabilities.
“We are requesting the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the delegation to act immediately in recommending the granting of improved status to all guest workers affected by the [local labor law] P.L. 15-108 before it affects the entire guest workers community,” Syed said.
He said the local labor law has demoralized the guest workers because it threatens them with the nonrenewal of their contracts and restricted their ability to transfer to other employers.
Human Dignity Movement president Jerry Custodio, for his part, appealed for “humanitarian consideration” in their request for improved immigration status.
“We are taxpayers and have contributed a lot to the community. We consider CNMI our home and have spent almost half of our lives here. Our U.S. citizen children will be displaced and our families will be separated if we fail to get the desired status,” he said.
Custodio is hoping that federal immigration law will stop the “unfair labor practices, abuses and exploitation of workers” in the CNMI.
In their meeting with the delegation, the coalition also requested for the improved immigration status of children in active U.S. military duty and to allow long-term CNMI guest workers to work on the neighboring island of Guam.
The coalition also informed the delegation about the concerns of foreign nationals married to citizens of the Freely Associated States whose immigration status was not anticipated by the U.S. Congress when it drafted the CNMI federalization law, Syed said.
