immigration system, saying their agreement “makes clear that the CNMI exists under the sovereignty of the United States, which has inherent obligations to control matters of national concern.”
In his 39-page dismissal order explaining why the CNMI’s complaints for permanent and preliminary injunctions aimed at stopping the federalization statute under U.S. Public Law 110-229 or the Consolidated Natural Resources Act or CRNA were dismissed, Friedman said: “No doubt the CNMI would prefer that federal legislation never affect any matters of local concern, no matter how inextricably intertwined they may be with federal affairs. But it cannot rely on the Covenant to ensure that result.”
He added, “The fact that the application of federal immigration laws to the CNMI through the CNRA may have a dramatic impact upon the CNMI’s labor force does not convert an immigration law into a labor law. It has long been recognized that immigration laws necessarily have a significant impact on labor markets and practices.”
The dismissal of the CNMI’s case now empowers the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, one of the defendants in the case at hand, to administer starting Saturday the borders and immigration system of the CNMI.
The judge said the Covenant makes clear that the U.S. “will have complete responsibility for and authority with respect to matters relating to foreign affairs and defense affecting the Northern Mariana Islands.”
“In short, the challenged provisions of the CNRA are not unrelated to border security simply because they regulate matters beyond the border. Rather, they serve the United States’ interests in border security in a way that takes into account the peculiar history of the CNMI and the legacy of the CNMI’s local immigration regime,” he said.
The CNMI’s main arguments that the provisions of CRNA dealing with foreign workers already admitted to the CNMI “have nothing whatever to do with border security” but rather are concerned with internal labor matters and that “Congress’s concerns over border and homeland security are gratuitous” because “[t]he CNMI has excellent border security and poses no threat to the U.S.’s homeland security”; and finally, there’s “no evidence exists that the CNMI’s foreign workers…pose a threat to national threat” were all rejected.
The judge said the first argument appears to be based on the assumption that “border security” is achieved only at the border and nowhere else.
“That assumption makes little sense here. Thousands of individuals who would have been ineligible to enter the CNMI under federal immigration law already reside in the CNMI. Obviously, the United States could not simply ignore these individuals and at the same time regard the CNMI’s borders as ‘secure,’ because one of the principal ways the United States secures its borders is by requiring compliance with its immigration laws,” he said.
“But, as the United States recognizes, it would be rather harsh to secure the CNMI’s borders by expelling these individuals immediately. Thus, the CNRA takes a third-way approach to border security: it regulates not only those who may seek to enter the CNMI in the future, but also those who already have entered the CNMI and would have had to comply with federal immigration laws upon entry if only they had sought entry at a later date,” he added.
