WASHINGTON, D.C. — Governor Lourdes Leon Guerrero (D- Guam) recently traveled to Washington to testify in front of Congress about Compact of Free Association, or COFA, renewal agreements with the freely associated states.
“And it’s usually a 20-year agreement. There are a lot of provisions in that agreement,” said Gov. Leon Guerrero.
Gov. Leon Guerrero testified in front of the House Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs about the importance of the Guam Host Community Compensation Act, introduced by Congressman Jim Moylan (R- Guam).
“This is probably the first hearing that we’ve had in quite a while, specifically for this topic. It’s really important,” said Congressman Moylan. “This is our opportunity for the nation to understand that we are in support of the new agreement coming and to do our best for our three associated states migrating to Guam. We need additional help from the federal government.”
The legislation proposes to reinstate the annual reimbursements to Guam as a COFA host community, involve federal authorities when a COFA migrant is convicted of a felony and require evidence of work or education prior to a COFA migrant relocating to Guam.
Moylan and Gov. Leon Guerrero say previous provisions for reimbursements, that were removed in the last agreement, need to be included in the new one.
“Bring back language that was removed in the last negotiations of the agreement that would allow reimbursement of impact expenses to the states and territories,” said Gov. Leon Guerrero.
She says providing services for migrants can be costly.
“Individuals come for education and health care. While they’re there, we’re seeing issues about security, safety, crimes and so forth,” said Gov. Leon Guerrero, who says her administration has kept track of the costs. “Over five years of my administration, we have seen about a $424 million total of these four years in all those various public service programs.”
Leon Guerrero says Guam is often forced to cover the costs using its General Fund. She says reimbursements from the federal government are not going far enough.
“It’s only about 12.9 percent of the expense cost. And that’s not sufficient at all,” said Gov. Leon Guerrero.
The 20 year COFA agreement expired in September, and both Gov. Leon Guerrero and Congressman Moylan want to ensure Guam is adequately compensated to manage legal migration authorized by the federal government.
“We want to ensure that the host territory is also prepared for the additional requirements,” said Moylan.
