Mariana Islands Try Crying "Amnesty" To Thwart Immigration Controls

"A U.S. territory in the Pacific is battling to stop Congress from imposing federal guest-worker rules and an 'amnesty' for current temporary workers, saying aliens could then use the territory as an entry point to get into other places in the U.S. The government of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) says two bills working their way through Congress to impose federal immigration law on the territory would go back on the 1976 convention with the U.S. and put the islands' economy, already reeling, into a tailspin," the Washington Times reports. "But those pushing the bill say CNMI, which currently writes its own rules for immigration, is a magnet for human trafficking and is a huge hole in U.S. homeland security. They say the only solution is to impose the U.S. federal immigration system, which would include a new legal status for some long-term foreign workers." [FAIR comment: This was one of the big issues for disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pocketed millions in fees to keep the (in some cases literal) slave labor/contract labor system going in the Marianas, enriching clothing firms that made goods there to get a "Made in the USA" label.]

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