After a few hours of one-sided debate, the United States Senate passed legislation by unanimous consent that would impose U.S. immigration law on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The bipartisan measure, the Northern Mariana Islands Covenant Implementation Act (S. 1052), addresses continuing immigration abuses in the CNMI. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Senator Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sponsored S. 1052 and managed the bill during Senate consideration.

S. 1052 grants a ten-year transition period for full application of the Immigration Act to the CNMI to lessen any economic disruption to the Commonwealth. It contains a one-time grandfather provision for guest workers employed long-term (4 years). The bill authorizes a technical assistance program for training and recruitment and to promote CNMI economic diversification.

"The legislation before us won't correct all of the Commonwealth's problems, but it will address the most significant concern, immigration abuse," Akaka noted. "When the CNMI became a U.S. commonwealth in 1976, Congress granted it local control over immigration at the request of island leaders. We now know that this decision was a great mistake. I speak as a friend and neighbor when I say that this policy cannot continue. The CNMI system of indentured immigrant labor is morally wrong, and violates basic democratic principles."

Using its immigration authority, the Commonwealth has created an economy that relies upon the wholesale importation of low-paid, short-term indentured workers. Foreign workers pay up to $7,000 to employers or middlemen for the right to a job in the CNMI. When they finally reach the Commonwealth, they are assigned to tedious, low paying work for long hours with little or no time off. At night they are locked in prison-like barracks. If they complain, they are subject to immediate deportation at the whim of their employer. Some arrive in the islands only to find that they were victims of an employment scam. There are no jobs waiting for them, and no way to work off their bondage debt.

Concern about the CNMI's longstanding immigration problems has historically been bipartisan. The Reagan Administration first sounded the alarm about the run-away immigration policies that the Commonwealth adopted. The Administration of every President in the past 16 years – the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administrations – has criticized the Commonwealth's immigration policy.

Statistics on Commonwealth immigration provide compelling evidence of the need for reform. Twenty years ago, the CNMI had a population of 15,000 citizens and 2,000 alien workers. Today, the citizen population stands at 28,000, but the alien worker population has mushroomed to 42,000-- a 2,000 percent increase.

S. 1052 now moves to the House of Representatives for action.