North American Trade Dependent Alliance
PO Box 340484
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53234-0484
Statement to the Chapter 16 Working Group on Temporary Entry, U.S.
Delegation
February 24, 1998
The North American Trade Dependent Alliance is pleased to see the U.S.
delegation meeting in order to facilitate the development of a possible
solution to the issue of employment for the spouses of NAFTA
professionals. We would like to congratulate and thank you on this first
very important step.
While your meetings are a start to the resolution of this
issue, our group is concerned about the negative impact the inability of
spouses and children of NAFTA professionals to work may have while we
continue to wait for your resolution. Because of this, we would like to
introduce an additional temporary solution to the group. Also, as our
group encounters new NAFTA families, new problems occurring while under
NAFTA status are brought to our attention.
We would like to take this time to touch on some
additional issues such as post-secondary educational benefits for
dependents, the increased public discrimination against NAFTA
non-immigrants, the inability of dependent non-immigrants to gain
employment authorization based on economic necessity and the plight of
Trade Dependent spouses facing divorce. We wish to see the free flow of
information between our two groups.
During the period of which the United States actively seeks resolution
to the issue of spousal employment, we, the North American Trade Dependent
Alliance, would like to see the introduction of an immediate emergency
measure temporarily permitting the spouses and children of NAFTA
professionals to be permitted to apply for, and be granted, interim
Employment Authorization dependent upon the continued TN status within the
family. In granting temporary work authorization, your group will have
addressed the spousal employment issue as well as the continued unskilled
labor shortages being experienced by employers in the United
States.
A new problem encountered by our group is that of the extention of
post-secondary education benefits to tax-paying state resident NAFTA
families. We are in the process of documenting the tuition status granted
by the major universities for NAFTA professionals and their families. Our
group finds it disappointing that the education of our children and
spouses was overlooked in the creation of NAFTA. Almost half of the
universities on our list do not grant in-state tuition benefits to NAFTA
families. This means that, on one income alone, NAFTA families are unable
to receive the higher education which is completely incidental of our
relocations.
NAFTA family members attending school are not even
permitted on-campus employment to help pay for outrageous
out-of-state tuition amounts, a basic right afforded to even F visa
holders. While education benefits for minor children in
elementary and highschools continue,
as soon as these children graduate from highschool their dreams
are squashed by an oversight on the part of the authors of NAFTA.
It is also a concern of many families with
older children that it remains unclear if their children may be trade
dependents until they are twenty-one or twenty-four years old. If their
eligibility for NAFTA status terminates when the child is twenty-one, the
child will be unable to finish their post-secondary educations unless they
skip numerous grades in high school. Our group would like to see the
NAFTA
Chapter 16 Working Group meet and agree upon the right of reciprocal
education benefits being extended to NAFTA families. This agreement would
be similar in function, although much more simple, to the existing
reciprocal social security agreements between the United States and other
countries. We would also like to see the
introduction of a new category of dependents for the adult
children of NAFTA professionals who are still attending
post-secondary institutions and are still dependent on their
NAFTA parent for support.
NAFTA families have increasingly faced difficulties stemming from
discrimination because of our non-immigrant status. Government
agencies such as the Social Security Administration and state DMVs,
as well as schools such as the University of California, New York state
universities,
and all of the public post-secondary institutions in Virginia all
discriminate against NAFTA families on the basis of their temporary
non-immigrant status. With the introduction of the Illegal Immigration
Reform Act and the recent Final Rule on dual intent being published in the
Federal Register this discrimination is only going to increase.
Acknowleding and enforcing that NAFTA professional status is only
temporary and that NAFTA professionals are not permitted dual intent
because of this temporary status is undermining our families' attempts at
obtaining normal lives while in the United States. It is our hope that
the NAFTA Chapter 16 Working Group will readdress the "temporary"
classification in Chapter 16, this time doing so completely seperate from
the issues of inanimate objects of other Chapters in order recognize the
fact that Chapter 16 deals with people and not
goods.
Recently, it has come to our attention the exact plight of the trade
dependent spouse if the marriage between the trade national and trade
dependent falters and fails. The trade dependent spouse, being a
nonimmigrant whose status is directly hinged to the trade national's
status, will no longer have a legal status in the US if the marriage
terminates. Due to some drastic oversights in the agreement between the
US
and Canada, the trade dependent spouse (usually the wife, 95% of the time)
will be forced to leave the US immediately and probably without her
children, pets, material possessions and family home. To stay in her
State
and attempt to gain legal custody of her children and permission to take
the children with her to Canada, will result in her being without legal
status and having no means of legally supporting herself. The trade
dependent is unable to even apply for employment authorization based on
economic necessity as trade dependents are excluded from the list of
people
who may apply for an economic necessity EAD. If she attempts to take her
children out of the country via ground or air transportation, she may
quickly discover that she is refused entry without notarized permission of
her ex-spouse to take the children to Canada! This is due to the agreement
that Canada and the US shares about international abductions.
Often, the divorces between NAFTA individuals result from worsening
financial conditions within the household. Even though the Trade
Dependent
spouse "could" qualify for her own TN I-94 in one of the sixty-three
professions, chances is that the spouse will not happen to have that
particular education. The economic necessity route for gaining employment
authorization is forbidden to Trade Dependents, no matter how harsh the
circumstances. It does not matter in the least that the Trade Dependent
spouse may be facing ultimate divorce, separation, the inability to
provide
for her children and possible denial of custody of her children forcing
her
to leave everyone and everything behind as she flees the country.
We wish to emphasize that most Canadian professionals and their
families
working and living in the United States wish to remain law-abiding
individuals. They usually have the utmost respect for the laws of the
United States and would not wish to ever accidentally break the law of the
land. However, it would hardly be surprising if some NAFTA families,
faced
with such negative obstacles, made some difficult decisions to break a law
or two. Let us work together, ensuring that all the NAFTA families retain
the ability to remain the law-abiding individuals that they want to be!
The North American Trade Dependent Alliance appreciates the support
and communication received from Jacquelyn Bednarz over the past year. We
hope to establish closer communication ties with your group and we will
make ourselves available for consulting purposes, as true experts on NAFTA
Chapter 16 trade dependency, to your group at any time. In addition, we
would appreciate the opportunity to send a representative from our group
to speak directly with the U.S. Delegation on the ramifications of NAFTA
trade dependent status. We hope to be welcomed to meet with you
at your next meeting.
Thank you, we appreciate your addressing this issue with more
frequency. We hope that the group will introduce emergency measures
for NAFTA dependents to seek employment while working on the
permanent proposal for the
work authorization of spouses. We would
appreciate if your group also began
considering measures for resolution of the other
issues that have arisen more recently. We would be grateful to any member
of the U.S. Delegation who takes some of these issues to heart in order to
begin working on draft resolutions to these problems. We hope to see such
drafts prepared in time for the 1998 Working Group
meeting.
Thank you,
The Members of the North American Trade Dependent Alliance