Knight: S.2739 is vague at best

The chair of the Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands describes S.2739 as “vague at best and ambiguous in many parts.”

Reacting to Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee spokesman Bill Wicker’s statement that the bill is sensitive to needs of the Commonwealth and its people, HANMI chair Lynn A. Knight stopped short of saying that the bill is all for show.

“It has some flowery wording that is designed to assure us that the bill would take care of our economic interests, but there is absolutely no substance to that effect. It offers no details whatsoever to do so and no funding to do so. There are no economic incentives, no mitigating support—there is no safety net whatsoever included in the bill to take care of us if our economy is damaged by the impact of the bill,” she said in an e-mail to the Saipan Tribune.

Knight, along with Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Jim Arenovski traveled last month to Washington, D.C. to convince lawmakers about the potential damage federal takeover of immigration will have in the CNMI.

She said the complete phase out of the islands’ guest worker program is the most unpalatable part of the provision.

“Unfortunately, the phasing out of our guest worker program is stated very clearly in the bill. The bill says it would take our program down to ‘zero.’ Zero is pretty harsh. When we asked federal officials what this meant, they said ‘zero,’” she said.

Knight, who is also publisher of the Saipan Tribune, added that even the lifting of caps for H visas during the transition period is unreasonable since that option will not be open for the Commonwealth after 2014.

“When we asked whether the lifting of the H caps would remain in effect if the transition period ends, we were told that it would not and that the H cap would go back in effect—absolutely—at the end of 2014, regardless of whether the transition would continue. So what does that mean? It would mean a forced decline in our population as we phase down our own program to zero.”

Knight said she also does not agree with a congressional staff source’s assertion that S.2739 will extend permanent U.S. status to nonresident workers.

“The bill does not give permanent status to guest workers. It would place people under the H visa program, which does not fit our needs at all for long-term workers in all of the skill set we need in these islands,” she said.