‘Human resources key to NMI economic growth’

Speaking before human resource managers yesterday, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) vowed to make sure every person in the CNMI “has enough to eat, is healthy and educated, and has a job” to maximize its human resources. This also includes not losing valuable third-country nationals under the Commonwealth-only worker program set to end in 2019.

Sablan also updated members of the Northern Marianas Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM, on the status of an immigration bill that seeks to extend beyond 2014 the following: the CNMI’s exemption from accepting asylum applications to protect tourism, the CNMI’s exemption from the H visa cap, the E2-C investor visa program, and the CW program after the U.S. Labor secretary already extended it administratively.

H.R. 4296 faces an uphill battle mainly because there’s only 12 congressional session days left before the Nov. 4 elections and 15 more days before 2014 ends to get it passed.

“I expect to be in Congress every session,” Sablan told SHRM members at the Pacific Islands Club, reiterating the bill’s importance to the CNMI and its tourism economy.

In a question-and-answer with SHRM members, Sablan said a continued CW program beyond 2019 is not the answer to maximizing human resources.

“There are ways to approach this,” he said.

Every election season, the status of long-term foreign workers is on a spotlight. Depending on who the candidate is, they are either for or against supporting a permanent immigration status for long-term foreign workers.

This time, however, the CNMI economy is expanding and the need for a reliable workforce is needed more than ever while the U.S. worker pool is still limited.

The delegate, who is seeking re-election on Nov. 4, said the CNMI cannot build its economy with the sale of natural resources such as pozzolan in Pagan, fish in the ocean, sunlight for electricity or geothermal energy—at least for now—but it can do so with its most important resource: “our people.”

Sablan said he also looks forward to working with the Northern Marianas Chapter of SHRM, and everyone in the community to continue to develop that one priceless resource.

There are other policy issues, he said, including ownership of submerged lands around CNMI islands and managing increased U.S. military activity in the islands over the next years and decades.

“But aside from those issues, almost everything else I work on has to do with human resources, making sure that our people are healthy, that they have enough to eat, that families stay together, that our population does not continue to decline,” he said.

Debunking food stamp myths

One of Sablan’s goals is ensure parity in the amount of food assistance received by people in the CNMI compared to other states and territories.

At the SHRM meeting yesterday, Sablan laid out the facts to try to debunk myths that food stamps are “a bad thing” and that they “rob people of the motivation to work.”

“We have 8,000 people receiving food assistance. Most of them, 6,000, are kids under 18, or full-time students. Another 1,000 are people who have to stay home to take care for children under 12 or for someone with a disability. Another 500 are mentally or physically challenged. And about 300 are elderly,” he said.

If one is to add it all up, almost everyone getting food aid falls in one of those categories: young, old, in school, someone with disability, or a caregiver.

“Yet, at the same time, almost 900 of those people who are getting help are also working. So it’s clear that food stamps don’t discourage people from working. In fact, having enough to eat probably makes it possible for more people to work,” he said.

Rota and Tinian people have started getting higher food stamp benefits because food costs are higher on those islands. Sablan is also working on raising benefits for Saipan residents “very soon.”

The biggest change, however, is one that will bring the CNMI to equity with the rest of the country. The CNMI now has a $33-million pilot program he had successfully included in the Agricultural Act of 2014.

“Groundwork is already being laid. About a year from now, we should see the program starting up with electronic benefit cards and $31 million in new benefits that will bring us up to par with the nation,” he added.

Altogether, he said, that’s about $90 million in food assistance money over five years.

Sablan also touched on the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, which he said increased the Medicaid grant to the CNMI by $109 million over a 10-year period, lowered the CNMI’s local Medicaid match from 50 percent to 43 percent, and got 16,000 local people eligible for Medicaid or half the U.S. citizen population.

The delegate also said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ approach to Obamacare still leaves some uncertainty and is incomplete.

“Because, although the HHS action changes the requirements for insurance sold, it does not change the requirements for insurance that employers offer to their employees,” he added.

Sablan urged human resource managers to consult their company lawyer if they have doubts about the rules for their particular company.

Like gubernatorial candidates and others seeking election in November, Sablan is also off to Portland, Oregon, today for the 10th Annual CNMI Labor Day Softball Tournament. Annually, the softball tournament has become a reunion of sort for CNMI residents now living in different states. On an election year, the tournament also becomes a campaign stop.