‘A lot refuse to understand’

All resources are being exhausted to educate the public of how serious a drop in the number of foreign workers would affect the CNMI economy and in every person’s life yet a lot refuse to understand that the CNMI has an economy because of the businesses and workers that are here.

“People don’t understand the veracity of the negative impact,” said Marian Aldan-Pierce, a board member of the Northern Marianas Business Alliance Corp.

“If you read the comments in the newspapers, one would think, ‘Are they really here and looking at what’s really happening?’ Unfortunately, some think that when we need money, it just automatically pops up,” she added.

If the CNMI doesn’t have enough people, it will not have an economy, Aldan-Pierce said. “Do we want to go back to the times where you drive by car dealers and see one or two cars and, if you want to buy something, you have to place it on order and then you have to wait?”

“That’s an example of the situation here for years. Is that where the people want to go back to? Do we want to go back to the retirees wondering if they are going to get 100 percent of what’s due them?” she added.

U.S. Citizenship Immigration Services had announced in November that it is cutting 3,000 from this fiscal year’s slots in the CNMI-Only Transitional Worker program.

NMBAC chair Alex Sablan said that aside from social media, physical documents are being disseminated in the CNMI, explaining the purpose of a drive to gather as many signatures as possible in support of rolling back the CW cut and possibly extending the CW program.

The signature drive would be conducted in various businesses and offices starting today, Tuesday, at the Christmas at the Marianas in Susupe from 5:30pm to 9:30pm.

Sablan said NMBAC hopes to get more than 20,000 signatures that they will bring to Washington, D.C. The business community is being tapped as well.

“We’ve asked friends and organizations though our networks. We have hundreds and thousands now but we could use more. We will have other booths set up in front business stops and anywhere else we can imagine because this is vital.”

Sablan will be joined in Washington, D.C. by other NMBAC board members: Aldan-Pierce, Gloria Cavanagh, Velma Palacios, Viola Alepuyo, Perry Inos Jr., and Josephine Mesta.

“We need the public’s support and we need the backing of signatures to make sure they understand that there are thousands of people here are at stake—U.S. citizens and foreign national workers alike,” Sablan said.

“We are hoping we can get a good percentage of the business community as what we are trying to gauge here is the economic impact this 3,000 headcount reduction on particular businesses. We are hopeful we get a good percentage of businesses on island and we think we do.”

“The Chamber has 168 members but it’s also 65 percent of the total economy in GDP. Through the Chamber and small businesses that we are trying to reach, we are hopeful we catch the percentage of the overall number,” he added.

According to Sablan, the idea behind the signature drive and NMBAC’s trip to Washington, D.C. in December is to present the best case.

“We have nothing to do with the actual legislation, only to present it. It is up to our delegate in Congress, our governor who has a relationship with the president, and our effort through our lobbyist to get the Senate to understand the implications of this. That’s going to be their job to pass actual legislation to get it to a point wherein we can get it dropped and passed by both Houses and get the signature of the president,” he said.

“That was the strategy behind this. The governor would handle the administration, the House will be handled by our delegate, and we needed a group that was going to handle the Senate and so we hired a lobbyist to do that,” he added.

Sablan said that they need all the information and tally by Dec. 6.

“We are hopeful that we won’t come home empty-handed in a sense that, while we are there, they will be able to see fit to drop a piece of legislation and get it moved on,” Sablan said

“Do we think that’s going to happen? We don’t know. But our end goal is to get a piece of legislation dropped by the end of this year,” he added.