Torres says they continue to encourage feds on CW fixes

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres says they continue to encourage federal immigration officials to address immediate fixes to the effects on businesses and foreign workers with a breached cap on contract workers this fiscal year.

In an interview last week, the governor said he has met with several businesses recently and they echoed numerous concerns that the capping on contract workers “hampers our economic growth.”

“Because without labor you cannot have growth,” he said. “So we are encouraging the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) and work with them to continue to look at the immediate solution because we have immediate impact that is happening now, we continue to experience that.”

About 1,300 affected foreign workers who’ve had their petitions rejected due to the breached capped of 12,999 have been leaving or are expected to leave the Commonwealth before the end of the fiscal year.

During a presentation last week, Department of Labor Secretary Edith DeLeon Guerrero—representing Torres—shared some of the “administrative fixes” or short term Torres and his team proposed to federal counterparts in trip to Washington, D.C. earlier last month.

Among others, they recommended that USCIS allow affected CW-1 workers to remain lawfully in the CNMI until Oct. 1, 2016, the start of the new fiscal year and when their employer may submit a new petition on their behalf.

This can be done in two ways: USCIS may establish a “cap-gap” relief system to affected contract workers, patterned after the cap-gap program used for F1 visas transiting to the H1-B visa program.

Using its discretion under immigration law, federal officials could grant on a case-by-case basis to certain individuals to apply for the cap-gap.

The CNMI also recommended that the federal government use its discretionary authority to grant humanitarian parole or parole in place on a case-by-case basis to affected CW workers, to address the humanitarian issue of separating families.

The CNMI recommended that USCIS recalculate the 2016 cap to adjust available permits for 2016 to 13,998.

The CNMI also asked that contract workers be given additional time to leave, or more than the 10 days given after their permit expires.

The CNMI also recommended that a two-track system be developed in processing permits that prioritizes renewals over new applications, with quota reserved for eligible and long-term CW-1 workers.

The CNMI also recommended that they allow Chinese nationals to submit H2-B visa petitions. Right now, China is not a treaty country under the program and a Saipan casino, Best Sunshine International, Ltd., has shown a preference for hiring these contract workers, in the thousands, under the contact worker program, eating a huge amount of quota space that could have gone to long-term workers in the Commonwealth.

The CNMI also recommended long-term recommendations including permanent status for long-term guest workers in the CNMI, better federal-CNMI cooperation and data sharing, entering in a MOU to provide the CNMI with Earned Income Tax Credits to incentivize movement into the workforce, and to support legislation by U.S. delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) to extend the contract worker program, a transition program set to expire in 2019, to 2029 with an option to grant an additional five-year extension after a 2027 review.

The legislation would also increase the CW cap to 18,000, which is 4,000 permits less than the available permits at the start of the transition period, or CW program.