KEY POINTS

• Resets the number of CW visa slots for fiscal year 2019 to 13,000 instead of the 4,999 slots U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had designated for the fiscal year.

• Continues the bar on claims of asylum in the CNMI.

• Allows employers to apply for a CW-1 visa that is valid for three years for CW workers who have been continuously employed in the NMI since fiscal year 2015.

• Extends the CNMI transitional period to 2029, thereby extending the CW-1 permit program and several other transitional programs by an additional 10 years. Such programs include the E2C visa program for investors, the CW-1 permit program, unlimited H-visas for temporary workers, and the bar on claims of asylum for Chinese tourists.

• Slashes the number of CW-1 slots by 500 per fiscal year for fiscal years 2020 to fiscal year 2022 and 100 per fiscal year for fiscal years 2023 to 2029.

• Creates incentives for the hiring, retention, and protection of U.S. workers.

• Establishes an annual supplemental fee of $200 per nonimmigrant worker for each employer who is issued a permit during the transition program. Permits longer than one year shall pay the fee for each year of requested validity at the time the permit is requested. The Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to adjust the amount congruent to the percentage equal to the annual change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Said funds would go to the funding of vocational education, apprenticeships, or other training programs for U.S. workers.

• Imposes on each employer filing for a petition a $50 additional fraud prevention and detection fee, which shall be deposited and used for preventing and detecting immigration benefit fraud in the NMI.

• Requires the NMI government to submit an annual report laying out plans for the expenditure of amounts deposited for the training programs of U.S. workers; a projection of the expenditures in terms of job placements for U.S. workers; and a report in employment of U.S. workers attributable to expenditures of such amounts during the previous year.

• Requires the CNMI governor to report on the ratio between U.S. workers and foreign workers based on income tax filings with the Commonwealth for the tax year.

• Requires the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office to report no later than December 2019 and biennially after to submit a report to the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the Senate, the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Natural Resources of the House of Representatives, the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions of the Senate and the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce of the House of Representatives that identifies the ratio between United States workers and other workers in the Commonwealth’s workforce during each of the previous five calendar years.

• Allows the CNMI governor to submit recommendations to USCIS on the CW-1 program.