The CNMI, the governor’s lawyers said, was not given enough notice and time to comment on the “interim final rules.”
In a statement, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said the people of the commonwealth have the right to participate in the rulemaking process and their comments should be given weight before any rules are imposed.
“I believe that these new regulations dramatically support our contentions that the ‘labor provisions’ of the law violate our right to self-government guaranteed by the Covenant. We want the court to consider these regulations before reaching a final decision on our motion for a preliminary injunction,” he said.
“These regulations affect all elements of our community — our struggling economy, our investors and employers, our entire workforce, and our senior citizens. I have asked our lawyers to challenge this violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and to seek appropriate injunctive relief,” he added.
The U.S. Department of Justice earlier described the CNMI’s case and its arguments as “speculative” because the regulations had not been announced yet.
In their five-page supplemental memorandum, the governor’s lawyers said: “Now that the interim rules have been issued, defendants’ own theory dictates that the CNMI’s injury is no longer ‘speculative’ and that its complaint is undeniably ripe.”
The CNMI said the federal interim rules exceed the bounds of U.S. congressional authority.
“As defendants concede, the immigration laws are laws ‘relating to the immigration, exclusion, deportation, expulsion or removal of aliens.’ … This definition cannot be stretched to accommodate the scheme proposed in the interim final rule, which imposes an employer-by-employer, worker-by-worker local labor permitting regime that will ultimately take down to zero the CNMI’s crucially important population of existing foreign workers lawfully admitted to the commonwealth,” the CNMI added.
“These are regulations that over the next two to five years will wipe out two-thirds of the CNMI’s private sector workforce, and the defendants have promulgated these rules by the force of central fiat from bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. with no local input or transparency whatsoever, with not even an effort to solicit comments from the people most affected.”
