Rose Cuison Villazor on Immigration Developments on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa

Rose Cuison Villazor (Hofstra) provided ImmigrationProf with this guest post:

Those interested in the ongoing discussion of federal vs. local immigration authority might benefit from examining the experience of U.S. territorial immigration regulation. Congress delegated its plenary power over immigration law to two U.S. territories – the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa – which enabled these territories to govern the entry and exit of people on their islands. As blogged in May, Congress passed a law (Public Law 110-229, Consolidated Natural Resources Act [CNRA]), which included a section that applied the Immigration and Nationality Act in its entirety to the CNMI. The law will become effective on November 28, 2009, officially ending local immigration authority.

The CNMI’s local immigration authority, which lasted for more than 30 plus years, was based in a political agreement that the Mariana Islands entered into with the US in 1978. That political agreement reserved Congress’s authority to make the INA effective in the CNMI at any time, which it exercised through the CNRA. [The CNMI government has an ongoing lawsuit against the federal government to prevent the application of the INA].

One provision that was part of the original bill that later became the CNRA but was ultimately omitted at the last minute dealt with the conferral of a path to legal permanent residency for long-term guest workers in the CNMI. Thousands of workers were brought it to the CNMI under the local immigration law’s “guest worker program” to assist the CNMI with infrastructure and other economic-related development. Because the law that implemented the INA excluded this provision, there are a lot of questions and issues today about what will happen to the guest workers. Many of them have been living in the CNMI for 5, 10, 15, and 20 years and have established families and other social networks on the islands. Thus, many advocates have urged Congress to pass legislation that would confer these guest workers with legal permanent residence.

This past weekend, a congressional delegation visited the CNMI to meet with guest workers and their families. Thousands of people showed up for the assembly. Three individuals – a guest worker, a U.S. citizen teenager whose parents have resided in the CNMI for twenty years, and a U.S. citizen child with a disability – gave testimony to the congressional delegation. Their testimonies focused on the implications of the CNRA on their families’ ability to remain together.

Rose Cuison Villazor, Associate Professor of Law at Hofstra University School of Law, who was in the CNMI this summer to interview guest workers for a research project on the issue, submitted a written statement to the congressional delegation. The statement emphasized that there is precedent to granting the CNMI guest workers with permanent immigration status. In 1982, Congress terminated the Virgin Islands’ guest worker program (a less restrictive H2 visa program) and conferred the thousands of guest workers there with a path to legal permanent residency.

We’ll keep you posted on any other developments on this issue.