CNMI: New immigration laws to protect economy
Updated
The CNMI Senate has successfully passed a resolution asking the U.S.Senate to delay action on changes to immigration laws to allow time for further debate. The Bill places all Northern Marianas immigration and labour issues under the jurisdiction of Federal officials. It has already passed successfully through the U.S. House of Representatives and is now before the US Senate. Who can more effectively control CNMI's borders is a hotly contested issue. Opponents of preserving local control over immigration say the present system has failed miserably.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speakers: Jim Benedetto, Federal Labor Ombudsman, with the office of Insular Affairs, with the US Department of the Interior based in Saipan, CNMI
COUTTS: The agreement known as the Covenant passed through the US House of Representatives and then by the Senate by February 1975 and shortly after signed into law by President Gerald Ford, it gives the US the right to take control of labour and immigration. The bill was then approved in a plebiscite by 78.8 per cent of CNMI's voters.
One of the draftsmen of the amendments to the bill, Federal Labor Ombudsman Jim Benedetto says it was only a matter of time until the US took control of CNMI's labour and immigration laws.
BENEDETTO: In the Covenant, a key part of the Covenant said that the local people here in the CNMI would retain control over their own minimum wage and their own immigration laws until such time as the Congress of the United States acted to extend those laws to this jurisdiction. Now that was always contemplated as part of the Covenant, as part of the deal.
COUTTS: Those opposed to the new bill include Governor Benigno Fitial and some local lawmakers who say the proposed federal immigration system will have far less flexibility to support the commonwealth's continuing need for foreign national workers, a point Mr Benedetto says the bill has taken into account.
BENEDETTO: The extension of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the federal law to the CNMI was going to have to be done in some sort of specific way taking into account all of those circumstances. If we for instance required every tourist that came to the commonwealth to obtain a visa from an embassy overseas and to go through that lengthy delay and so forth, it would kill our tourism industry and everybody understands that. And so great pains were taken in the crafting of this legislation to make sure that this was done in a manner that was sensitive to the needs of the commonwealth and its economy.
COUTTS: CNMI's use of foreign workers in its clothing and manufacturing industry has come under close scrutiny for a number of years. Several factors have now closed following investigations into sweat-shop abuses and alleged prostitution. Jim Benedetto says the lack of proper controls and poor minimum wages have adversely affected CNMI's economy.
In the past 18 months foreign workers made up half of the unskilled labour force in CNMI. Remittances sent out of the country and the strain on the infrastructure have adversely affected the economy. Jim Benedetto does not agree that raising the minimum wage will result in the private sector moving industries to neighbouring countries where the minimum wage regulations do not apply.
BENEDETTO: You know you have to draw the line somewhere. This is a US territory and if you say well we have to keep the wages low because there's another place somewhere else that has a lower minimum wage, where do you draw the line? Do we lower our minimum wage from $3.55 an hour down to ten cents an hour because in Cambodia or Laos they pay ten cents an hour and we need to compete with them? I think not.
