passport tribulations

United States

US islanders overcome passport tribulations

. . . But not, writes David S North, years of frustrating effort.

IN A series of separate acts over the past year, the United States Gov ernment has eased immigration res trictions for a number of Pacific Islan ders while Canada has narrowed one. The US has: helped tourism by making it easier to visit Guam; granted citizenship to a perhaps thousand Marianas residents with

Japanese ancestors; given National

(citizenship) status to a number of once-stateless Samoans, and granted legal residence status to literally thousands of previously illegal Ton gans in Hawaii and on the Mainland.

Tourists 99 per cent of whom are from Asia are important to Guam’s economy. The island’s hotels and gov ernment have long felt that if visitors did not need to obtain a visa from an overworked American embassy, there would be more tourists. (A Japanese citizen, for example, does not need a visa to enter the Northern Marianas).

The battle began several years ago, when the late Guam delegate Won Pat

begin pulling strings in Congress for

this goal; an effort carried on by his successor, Ben Blaz.

After years of pondering the list of nations whose citizens would be eligi ble for non-visa entry (see box), the US began admitting tourists without visas into Guam on October 1.

Meanwhile, in the second of these island-immigration decisions, the US Government dropped an unreasonable position it had taken earlier regarding a large group of mixed-ancestry resi dents of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

The problem began with the Covenant between the Marianas and the Main land, which ended some 40 years of trusteeship status; it said all residents of the island who had been citizens of the old Trust Territory would become citizens of the United States once the

Covenant was approved, provided

they were otherwise eligible.

No one paid much attention to the last provision until the US decided that anyone with a historical allegiance to another country would not be eligi ble for US citizenship. While it was presumably not intentional, this deci sion could be construed as having both racist and, oddly, sexist overtones because it fell heavily on one part

of the island’s population, persons with at least one Japanese male ances tor. A few people of other ancestry were caught in the situation as well. (By way of background, the US has always taken a dim view of dual

citizenship and requires each newly

naturalised citizen to swear: “ . . . 1 absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance "and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”

After the Congress extended citizenship to the residents of the Marianas, the bureaucrats decided re sidents with prior allegiance to other nations would have to renounce and abjure it prior to the effective date of the Covenant, November 3, 1986.

There were, however, two problems; the Government did not make the announcement very effectively, and no one in the Marianas thought of them selves as having other allegiances. The Japanese occupation ended more than 44 years ago and virtually no resident of Saipan or the other islands used a

Japanese passport.

The State Department which issues US passports was aware of Japanese citizenship law, however, and Knew that all descendants through the male line of Japanese citizens were re garded as Japanese citizens under Japanese law. The department there fore refused to issue US passports to descendants of unions of Japanese fathers and Chamorro mothers, though there were a lot of marriages and Babies born in the 30 years of Japanese control, from 1914 to 1944.

Several of those who had been de nied US passports on the allegiance issue sued in US District Court lor the District of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The class action suit was won by the islanders, but for reasons hara to determine from this distance, the decision ap plied only to people under the age of 18. Other suits were then filed for Eeople over 18, and again the Justice ►epartment dragged its feet instead of accepting the precedent laid down for the youngsters.

Reason ultimately prevailed, howev

er, and in August all parties agreed to a joint summary judgment that

granted citizenship to islanders of mixed ancestry.

In reality this was more of a travel issue than a citizenship issue; the CNMI Government did not provide a different, lesser, legal status to the mixed-ancestry residents. But what the Mainland Government had done was to put about 1000 islanders into “pass port purgatory”, to Quote Roger Still well of the CNMI Washington office.

The Mainland Government cancelled the old Trust Territory passports issued to residents of the Marianas and issued US passports, but not to those in the mixea-ancestry group.

The latter were stuck, and could not leave the islands.

The most glaring example of this policy hit a CNMI resident then serv ing in the US Army in Germany. He was ordered to report to a new duty station in the States and though he could travel on his military docu ments, the Government said it could not allow his family (which had the old Trust Territory passports) to land in the States! After some stormy phone calls, the decision was reversed.

Meanwhile, in the third of these de

velopments another legislative battle

(won by former delegate Fofo Sunia) began to bear fruit this year in Amer ican Samoa as the State Department

began to implement his ‘one-parent

National’ law. In years past American Samoans born in the Territory or in the States, or born to two American Samoan parents anywhere in the world, were US Nationals from birth. (The status of US National is unioue to Samoa, and is roughly eaual to US citizenship). But if the birth were to one US National and a citizen of another nation (principally births to one American Samoan parent and one Western Samoan parent in Western Samoa) and it took place outside US jurisdiction, the child was simply state less. Sunia’s law allowed citizenship to be granted to such persons, but the State Department took a long time to implement the law. Among other things, it meant sending passport offi cials to Pago Pago from Hawaii. This year, however, the officials made a couple of trips to the islands and issued about 200 passports, the sym bols of citizenship.

The fourth major change in im

migration practices took place on the

Mainland, in Hawaii and in Guam, and that it was helpful to thousands of islanders came as a total surprise to

immigration specialists. The long

debated Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 created, among other things, an alien legalisa tion program for two classes of aliens: those who had been in the US illegally since 1982, and those who had been illegally in the states for a shorter period who had done some farm work. These amnesty provisions were designed primarily for former resi dents of Mexico, particularly Mexican farmworkers who are important to California’s powerful farm interests.

No one expected that close to 3000

Tongans would apply for legislation,

but they did (bear in mind that Tonga is a long way from the United States, that there are only about 100,000 Tongans living in the homeland, that there are no direct flights to the States, and that a Tongan wanting a visa to the US must apply for it in Suva). Even more surprising to Main land immigration officials was the fact that more than half of the Tongans applied as farmworkers. The agri cultural program was an easier route to legal status that the other one, and

was generally regarded as dogged by

large numbers of fraudulent applica tions though there was no specific discussion of Tongan fraud as there had been by applicants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Haiti and Mexico.

The number of applicants for lega lisation from South Pacific jurisaic tions were as follows:

Tonga 2921

Western Samoa 962 Australia 340 New Zealand 294

Fiji 246

Palau 117 Nauru 8 Papua New Guinea 7 French Polynesia 5 Solomon Islands 3

Fsm 1

Kiribati 1 New Caledonia 1 Tuvalu 1 Vanuatu 1 Total 5913 Most of the applications from Ton ga and from other islands were filed m California (particularly South Los Angeles) and in Hawaii.

While the US, sometimes unwitting ly . . . and sometimes gracelessly, was opening various doors to islanders, Canada narrowed one. Unlike the Un ited States, Canada allows citizens of many nations to enter without visas but has a list for which visas are re quired. Following the coups in Fiji, for example, that nation was added to the visa fist though Fiji continues to

turn the other cheek, and Canadians do not need a visa to visit Fiji.

One other barrier continues to slow travel from the independent islands of the South Pacific to the United States: the number of the places where one can secure an American visa. The US Department of State issues visas in the former Trust Territories (FSM, Marshalls, Palau and CNMI) and in Suva and Port Moresby, but nowhere else in the Pacific not in any of the French territories, the Solomons, Vanuatu, Western Samoa or even in American Samoa (where they were formerly available).

When asked if visa issue would be restored in Pago Pago, one senior

State Department official exploded

“over my dead body”: it seems the Governors of American Samoa and the Panama Canal Zone and their designees could in the past issue tourist visas, but the American Immigration Service was soon complaining to the State Department about the strange

parade of Iranians, Hong Kong

Chinese and other non-Pacific and non-Latin American people who were showing up with unlikely tales . . . and Governor’s visas.

First, the Department tried to

change the Pago Pago issue practices

to no avail. Then it sought to encourage some agency to investigate the pattern, but found that no one was willing to take jurisdiction in such an odd arrangement: not the State De-

partment’s internal investigations unit,

not the Department of the Interior

and not the FBI. State officials and

Congressional staff finally used just

about the most obscure legislative vehicle available to kill the practice they attached language to a private bill dealing with an individual immigrant, which allowed the immigrant into the State while taking the visa power away from the Governors, Though the US quietly took care of its P a go ? a go visa problem, one really outrageous immigration scam con tinues in the South Pacific: the sale of ‘Tonga Protected Persons’ passports.

These documents formerly cost about |USBOOO each, but now they are avail able for “a fee prescribed by His Majesty in Council in other words, a fee set by regulation . . . or, perhaps, by what the traffic will bear.

These passports’ are virtually

worthless as travel documents among the many nations that do not accept them are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the United States and they do not guarantee the holder entrance into Tonga, either. However, it is said some Latin American nations have been known to accept them.

On the other hand, the documents are hardly worthless to the Kingdom of Tonga. According to a government publication quoted m The South Sea Digest (July 8, 1988) Tonga sold $U56,500,000 worth of ‘Tonga Pro tected Person’ passports between Janu ary 1986 and April 1988. No wonder Tonga, with minimal exports, enjoys a balance of payments surplus! □