Samoa: 2400 aliens register in amnesty

More than 2400 foreign nationals who registered during a recent amnesty campaign will be allowed to reside legally in American Samoa if the Fono approves the Lolo Administration’s Immigration Amnesty bill in their next regular session.

The Amnesty Bill will temporarily increase the existing numerical quotas as prescribed by law.

In his June 26 letter to Fono leaders, Governor Lolo Matalasi Moliga said the government spent several months organising and carrying out a campaign to provide a pathway to amnesty for the many foreigners currently residing in the territory without lawful immigration status.

According to the governor, this situation occurred for a number of reasons, many of which have been or are being addressed, along with a numerical quota system allocated in the mid-1980s.

“The people we are talking about are contributing members of society, in some cases along with their families, who have fallen into circumstances not always of their own making,” the governor wrote in the letter.

“We owe them the opportunity to become full-fledged members of the community so they can fully partake in all community affairs and be fully counted for public planning purposes, and when federal assistance decisions are made arising out of our population count,” he explained.

Several federal funding amounts are based on population numbers and many in the community, including several lawmakers, have argued that the official 2010 census for the territory, with a population then of 55,519, was under counted.

According to the governor, the legislation proposes an increase in the existing quotas to account for 2,474 foreigners who registered under the amnesty campaign “plus another 1,637 who were lawfully present and already in the Immigration Board queue awaiting their quota to come available.”

“Much work has gone into this effort to date and now is our opportunity to clear the long list of aliens who are in the territory and have been awaiting the chance to be properly registered,” he said.

According to the administration, citizens of Samoa are the highest nationality seeking American Samoa citizenship, at 2,845— followed by Tonga at 457, Filipino at 446, Fiji with 101, China 96, Korea 12, New Zealand 19, and Vietnamese 17.

Other countries included in the bill—but all with less than ten citizens are: Australia, Tuvalu, Germany, Indonesia, Federated States of Micronesia, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Great Britain, Uruguay, Vanuatu and Taiwan.