UNDER THE TAKEOVER PROPOSAL Businesses face new uncertainties

The U.S. Senate’s version of takeover bill forces businesses in the CNMI to provide permanent resident status in the Commonwealth at the end of the nine-year transition period.

However, employers may find it hard to comply with the strict conditions imposed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, according to an analysis made by David Wiseman, co-chair of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s Government Relations Committee.

As S. 1052 seeks to change the social and economic condition of the CNMI, Mr. Wiseman said the proposed measure creates new uncertainties brought about by an expanded, but ill-defined role of the U.S. Department of Labor in granting businesses access to foreign workers and how many of them will be able to gain permanent residency status.

According to an analysis, the proposal, if enacted into law, will severely affect the social structure and economic condition in the Northern Marianas.

In altering the employment system of the CNMI, the bill provides three ways in which nonresident workers can become lawful permanent residents: 1) employer-sponsored resident status; 2) employment based immigrant visas; and 3) recruitment of new workers authorized to establish permanent residents.

While the bill allows some nonresident workers to be sponsored by their employers for permanent resident status, this is again subject to the following limitations:

• guest workers who have been here lawfully for five years;

• working lawfully for the entire five-year period;

• in a businesses that the INS determines “legitimate”;

• files a petition, together with the employer (who must also agree and co-petition) for an employment-based immigrant visa at any time before 180 days after the transition period ends;

• continues to be employed by that same legitimate business at the time the visa issued;

• the employer demonstrates a “reasonable expectation of generating sufficient revenue to continue to employ the alien in that business” for the next five years after the visa is issued; and

• if the alien is otherwise eligible for admission to the United States.

“The period of time during which an employee may qualify for this “one time grandfather provision” is not really one time, but extends throughout the entire transition period,” said Mr. Wiseman.

Some workers who are not here now may still gain the necessary five-year employment to qualify for permanent residency. Furthermore, the bill does not limit the number of workers who may be granted such status.

It does not matter too whether the INS quota limits for immigrants from a particular country for a particular year have been met as “aliens in the CNMI are exempt from such quota limits,” the analysis said.

Visas for an undetermined number of aliens allowing them to immigrate as permanent residents may be approved by INS. Unfortunately, before authorizing any such visas, INS must find that “exceptional circumstances exist with respect to the inability of employers … to obtain sufficient be made available during the following (federal) fiscal year.”

Unlike the employer-sponsored “one time grandfather provision,” Mr. Wiseman said employment-based immigrant visas require “consultation” with Commonwealth government leaders. He noted that the interest of the businesses, CNMI government leaders and INS may clash over the implementation of this option. Businesses hiring executives may find this beneficial but not those employers in dire need of workers for minimum wage positions.

The U.S. Department of Labor will most likely require each employer seeking to gain authorization to employ H-2B workers to present a recruitment employment plan where the business owners will reduce the number of H-2B workers to zero by 2009.

“Employers will probably need to demonstrate recruitment efforts in the United States, in Guam and in the Federated States of Micronesia to replace Asia H-2B workers with these other classes in order to qualify to employ any H-2B workers,” Mr. Wiseman said.