The FAS are Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia — Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei and Yap. Their citizens can live, work and study in the U.S. and its territories.
The Senate is drafting a recommendation to be submitted to the U.S. Congress based on the series of public hearings it conducted last year.
Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes, R-Saipan, said they were inclined to recommend the granting of FAS-like status to qualified guest workers — but after five years. They will not support U.S. permanent residency for nonresidents, he added.
Fitial said he wants the people of the CNMI get job opportunities in their own commonwealth.
Whatever skills the commonwealth doesn’t have, he added, “we should get from outside.”
“But if you are to create competition between my people and outsiders, that is one thing I will never support,” the governor said.
He said there should be a concerted effort on the part of all CNMI leaders to train the local workforce.
But he said guest workers who have the skills the CNMI does not have “deserve to stay and continue to work here if they want.”
Fitial recalled that when he sponsored the nonresident workers law in the early 1980s, there was only one objective and that was to provide the CNMI with job skills it didn’t have so it could build and expand its economy.
Press Secretary Angel A. Demapan, in an email interview, said the administration believes that there is already a naturalization process in place for qualified nonresidents pursuant to governing federal statutes.
The governor, he added, is poised to discuss a host of federalization issues when he visits the nation’s capital this month “in an effort to reach a resolution that would be in the best interests of the commonwealth.”
