“That’s the problem,” said Manglona, R-Rota and the CNMI’s most senior legislator. “We opposed it 100 percent instead of working with the U.S. Congress. We just said, ‘We don’t want it,’ we forgot to tell them, ‘If you’ll do it, this is how we want it done.’ ”
Like the House of Representatives, the Senate also adopted House Joint Resolution 16-17.
Sen. Joseph M. Mendiola, Covenant-Tinian, said as the then-Senate president, he and then-Speaker Oscar M. Babauta, Covenant-Saipan, requested the U.S. Congress and Homeland Security to be “sensitive to the needs of our businesses here.”
“We were assured,” he added, “that this concern would be addressed.”
Mendiola at the same time said Washington Rep. Pete A. Tenorio “should be protecting the CNMI’s interest” in the nation’s capital.
“Now that we will have a delegate to Congress, I hope we may be heard better” in Washington, D.C., Mendiola said.
Tenorio did urge the Fitial administration to work with the U.S. Congress and the White House in the drafting of the federalization law.
But the governor, a former Tan Holdings executive, insisted that the federalization of local immigration would be bad for the CNMI economy. Following the enactment of the federalization law, he filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. to prevent its implementation next year. He is now asking lawmakers to appropriate $400,000 for the lawsuit.
Unclear
Sen. Maria T. Pangelinan, D-Saipan, noted that lines 1 to 8 on page 3 of H.J.R. 16-17 “don’t make sense” and were “unclear.”
“We should be careful about the language of this resolution that we will send to Congress,” she said.
She was referring to the resolution’s statement that the CNMI’s current foreign investors will not qualify under U.S. immigrant or nonimmigrant investor categories.
“What we’re saying is that these businesses are here because we’re cheap,” she said.
According to Sen. Luis P. Crisostimo, D-Saipan, “Our laws were tailored for our needs; we’re too far from the U.S. and we need to compete with more attractive Asian cities with big labor pools.”
He said the CNMI should protect the local business community. “They’re the backbone of our economy,” he added.
Pangelinan replied: “All I’m saying is that we should understand what we’re telling Congress.”
She added, “The reason we have all these problems is because we allowed these types of businesses to come in.”
Knight said the resolution is asking Homeland Security “to give us a period of local control over investor visas — we’re asking for a transition period instead of ending the [investors’] status abruptly after June 1, 2009.”
According to Ed Villagomez of the Department of Commerce, the financial “threshold” in some U.S. states for foreign investors is at least $500,000, compared to the CNMI’s $50,000.
