The petition, the group said, will be signed by people who will be impacted by the implementation of federal immigration law.
These include guest workers, CNMI permanent residents and nonresident spouses, the Freely Associated States citizens and their nonresident spouses as well as their family members.
Nonresidents who are married to U.S. citizens, the widows and widowers of U.S. citizens, U.S. citizen children of nonresidents and the foreign-born children of U.S. citizens and nonresidents, parents of disabled and special needs U.S. citizen children and U.S. citizens who support the nonresidents’ cause, are also among the petitioners.
The group said there are no assurance about the recommendations for their improved status, and an assurance that status would be granted through subsequent legislation even if such recommendations were made.
They asked Obama and other U.S. officials to support the introduction of legislation that would grant green cards and a pathway to citizenship to long-term foreign workers and nonresidents in the CNMI.
“Many of us have lived and worked here for 10, 15, even 20 or more years. Hundreds of us have lived and worked in the CNMI for more years than we have lived in our home countries. Some of us came to the CNMI as young adults and we now have children and grandchildren. To all of the nonresidents signing this petition, the CNMI is our beloved home,” their petition stated.
The group said many of the petitioners have no more connections to their homelands and have no job prospects, no homes and no support systems in their countries they have left long ago.
While they understand that permanent status and a pathway to citizenship for them in the CNMI may be included in future national comprehensive immigration reform legislation, the petitioners asked Obama not to wait.
They said they are legal guest workers who were invited to build the economy and infrastructure of the Northern Marianas, and who were allowed to stay, year after year, with no prospect for adjusting to permanent residency.
In their petition, the group said they have a special and urgent situation that was created by “a unique and unjust set” of CNMI immigration and labor laws.
There is precedent for such relief, the group said, noting that in the 1980s, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the U.S. Congress realized that special legislation was needed to prevent the separation of guest workers from their U.S. citizen families.
U.S. Congress passed a law allowing guest workers in the U.S. Virgin Islands to adjust to permanent residency status, they added.
“It is easy for labor-exporting countries and host countries to view foreign workers as replaceable commodities that serve the economies for the nations concerned. But we are people; people with families and friends we love deeply. We are people who have used our needed skills to advance our adopted community economically and socially. For decades, we have been living as a disenfranchised underclass in a two-tiered society under the U. S. flag. We continue to hold out hope that the United States of America will grant us status and allow our families to stay together in the place we have called home all these years,” they said.
