Former Speaker Oscar Rasa of the CNMI Descents for Self-Government and Indigenous Rights believes there is a need “to remove the ambiguity on federal power.”
Rasa said Section 503 of the Covenant, which allows the U.S. to extend federal immigration and minimum wage laws to the islands has adverse consequences to the CNMI.
Rasa said CNMI legislators should also support the lawsuit that Gov. Benigno R. Fitial filed against the federal government.
According to Rasa, the lawsuit is challenging the “arbitrary application” of U.S. immigration law to the CNMI “without consideration of negative consequences.”
He said the federalization law was enacted without considering its potential consequences to the CNMI.
“So the governor was correct at that time when he was requesting the feds that the federalization bill’s passage be held until an analysis of its potential impact is provided to the Congress to review,” Rasa added.
He said the report of Malcolm D. McPhee & Associates and Dick Conway shows that the CNMI people and their elected officials should unite to prevent the lost of CNMI self-government and economic viability.
He urged CNMI lawmakers to support the lawsuit, which the governor earlier said would cost taxpayers $50,000 a month.
He said the report noted that the CNMI must “achieve a progressively higher standard of living for its people as part of the American economic community and develop the economic resources needed to meet the financial responsibilities of local self-government.”
The report also stated that “no one could have foreseen the future course of the CNMI economy at the time the Covenant was written.”
Rasa, former Covenant negotiator, disagreed, “I saw it happening and I didn’t sign it because I knew how the U.S. treated it territories.”
The report recommends the repeal of the U.S. laws that federalized local immigration and minimum wage.
Rasa said the report reinforces their group’s position that control over labor will determine the level of the islands’ economic growth.
“Without that control, our self-government as defined by the Covenant will diminish substantially,” he said.
