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Kilili seeks more CW-1 visas for construction workers
With the CNMI swimming in federal dollars intended for reconstruction and infrastructure hardening, or disaster recovery projects, that means the CNMI will need more construction workers far beyond the current limit set by law.
To resolve this, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) introduced Thursday a bill that seeks to allow the continued availability of Commonwealth Only Transitional Workers (CW-1) visas for construction workers beyond the 3,000-limit set for 2022.
Sablan said in his e-kilili newsletter over the weekend that he introduced H.R. 6906 in response to the request of the business community and the CNMI government and in recognition of the hundreds of millions of dollars Congress has provided to the Marianas for reconstruction and infrastructure hardening, or disaster recovery projects.
Sablan
He said H.R. 6906 authorizes the U.S. Homeland Security secretary to make the CW-1 visas available at the request of the CNMI governor.
The legislation seeks to amend Public Law 94-241 to authorize the Homeland Security secretary to increase the number of permits that are available to employers in construction and extraction occupations seeking CW-1 workers.
He acknowledged that this process might seem bureaucratic, but stated that the reality is that to set the number of visas or guess the time period in which they will be needed would be challenging for Congress.
The delegate said that, of the 3,000 CW-1 visas for construction workers for fiscal years 2020, 2021, and 2022 that were originally made available in his Disaster Recovery Workforce Act (enacted in U.S. Public Law 116-94), only about 100 have been used.
Sablan said that will change, however, as money for the Marianas public water system in the American Rescue Plan Act, for better roads in the infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, for solid waste management on Tinian and Rota in the 2019 Disaster Relief Act, and for other public and private projects are put to use, building the infrastructure the Marianas needs to replace what was destroyed by Super Typhoon Yutu and to prepare to withstand future storms made more likely by climate change.
