Grey: Federalization a frustration for businesses

The federal takeover of the Commonwealth’s immigration and foreign labor rules will likely force businesses to go through a lengthy and often expensive process to get the workers they need, CNMI Director of Immigration Melvin Grey said in a speech Thursday.

“Be prepared for a lot of work and a lot of frustration,” Grey said before a local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management at the Pacific Islands Club.

Business leaders have long said the so-called “federalization” of the CNMI’s immigration system will have a host of major consequences for the economy, diminishing the available alien workforce and prompting employers to compete for the small pool of foreigners the new regulations will let into the Commonwealth to work.

Grey’s warning of the added hurdles federalization will impose on businesses—including high fees for applying to get a foreign employee a visa and a lengthy timeline for winning its approval—comes as departments of Homeland Security and Interior officials this week met with scores of local government and private sector officials to begin talks on the impact of the new federal rules, which are due to be proposed later this year.

Local officials, Grey said, urged federal staff to consider that the Commonwealth, given its dependence on foreign labor and multinational population, is unique compared to other places in the United States and should be granted some flexibility on issues like visas.

“We’re not in the same category as the mainland and they can’t treat us the same or we’ll have no workforce or a very little workforce,” Grey said.

In an interview after the speech, Grey added the new federal immigration rules will likely confuse many business people that have to import foreign labor.

“It’ll take longer and be more expensive and lead to more frustration given the timeframe they will have to deal with,” Grey said. “We don’t know if that’s going to continue indefinitely—it could work out over time—but initially it’s going to be very confusing for people.”

Getting a visa for a foreign employee, he noted, will carry steep costs under a federal system that could climb as high as $3,000 in some cases. Moreover, the visa application process alone can take up to 60 days, not including the time it takes to get the application approved. In contrast, the CNMI’s current system can approve a new foreign worker’s entry to the CNMI within 30 days.

Employers, he said, “will have to do more planning, more advanced planning for sure” to meet their staffing needs as a result.

However, federal officials “are listening and hearing and taking to heart what we have said” about federalization’s potential economic consequences, Grey added.

Confusion over federalization, SHRM chapter president Frannie Salas said in an interview, is widespread among the business community.

“A lot of the business owners don’t know where to begin, where to start, who to turn to for answers on how do they start processing paperwork for whatever positions they will have to fill,” Salas said. “It’s going to have a real impact.”