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Lawyers to offer legal opinion on CW-1 cap issue
Lawyers Mark Scoggins and James Sirok will be offering their respective legal opinions on the CW-1 issue that would affect the lives of thousands of contract workers and their families. The forum is set on Tuesday, May 31, at the Chinese Association of Saipan office in China Town.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced last May 21 that they already reached the 12,999 CW-1 cap for the fiscal year and would reject all the applications they had received after the May 5, 2016 deadline including renewals of all current local contract workers.
CW-1 or the CNMI-only transitional worker status allows employers in the Commonwealth to hire foreign, non-immigrant workers that is renewable every year. The program gives the employers ample time to train the local workforce before the transition period ends in 2019.
The issue is a major concern for the CNMI as it employs more than 10,000 foreign workers mostly in the hotel and tourism industry. The economy is also in the upswing with a number of major investors coming in.
The two lawyers would explain what would happen in the future of the CW-1 regulatory policy with many in the business community seeing the 2019 deadline posing an imminent problem.
The forum is free with both lawyers also not charging for their services. They would help the affected parties further understand the program in preparation for the 2019 end of transition period.
The forum is open to everybody and other lawyers are welcome to join and offer their own legal opinions.
