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GAO-10-345R 1 (2010-02-16)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaanrd0001 and id is 1 raw text is: i &GAO Account bility Integrity * Reliabiity United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 February 16, 2010 The Honorable Jeff Bingaman Chairman Committee on Energy and Natural Resources United States Senate Subject: CNMI Immigration and Border Control Databases Dear Mr. Chairman: Under the terms of its 1976 Covenant with the United States, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) administered its own immigration systems from 1978 to 2009. The 2008 Consolidated Natural Resources Act called for the establishment of a transition program, to phase in U.S. immigration law' in the CNMI and to phase out the CNMI's current program for non-U.S. citizen (noncitizen) foreign workers; implementation of the transition program began on November 28, 2009.2 The act requires, among other things, that the CNMI government provide the Secretary of Homeland Security all Commonwealth immigration records, or other information that the Secretary deems necessary, to assist in the implementation of the transition program. The CNMI government has tracked the immigration status of foreign residents with two databases, the Labor and Immigration Identification and Documentation System and the Labor Information Data System. A third database, the Border Management System, tracks visitor arrivals and departures. We were asked to describe (1) the history and key attributes of the three databases and (2) the status of these databases during the transition to federal control of CNMI immigration. 1Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-229, Title VII, 122 Stat. 754, 853 (May 8, 2008) amends the U.S.-CNMI Covenant to establish federal control of CNMI immigration and includes several provisions affecting foreign workers and investors in the CNMI during a transition program that ends in 2014. The Secretary of Homeland Security decided to delay the start of the transition program for 180 days, from June 1, 2009, to November 28, 2009, as allowed under the law in consultation with the Secretaries of the Interior, Labor, and State, the Attorney General, and the CNMI Governor. Foreign workers refers to workers in the CNMI who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent U.S. residents. Other sources sometimes call these workers nonresident workers, guest workers, noncitizen workers, alien workers, or nonimmigrant workers. In this report, foreign workers does not refer to workers from the Freely Associated States-the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau-who are permitted to work in the United States, including the CNMI, under the Compacts of Free Association (48 U.S.C. § 1901 note, 1921 note, and 1931 note). GAO-10-345R Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Page 1

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