‘No cap on alien workers during transition period’

Under the federalization law, the CNMI can bring in as many alien workers as employers need under H1-B and H2-B visa categories during the transition period, according to federal Labor Ombudsman Jim Benedetto.

“If Bill Gates or Steve Jobs from Microsoft and Apple Computer…want to bring in and start a new computer programming center and bring in 1,000 or 10,000 H1-B workers, they could do it—at least during the transition period,” Benedetto said yesterday during the second of a series of forums organized by the Coalition of United Workers (NMI).

The forum, held at the Kilili Beach pavilion, was intended for the Bangladeshi, Sir Lankans, Nepalese, and Indian communities.

In his discussion on the visa issue, Benedetto said the good news for the CNMI is that the Commonwealth is exempt from the numeric cap for H1-B and H2-B workers.

The U.S. government allows only about 66,000 people to get those visas nationwide. Under the old immigration policy, the CNMI would have to compete with other states for those visas and Benedetto said the Commonwealth will get very few of them.

“Usually by mid-year of every year, the quota is exhausted already and there’s no more slots available. But under the new law we are exempt from that 66,000 cap,” he said.

As long as the transition period lasts, he said, CNMI employers can bring in as many H1-B and H2-B workers as they need to.

The H1-B visa generally requires a worker to have a college degree and these people are engineers, architects, lawyers, nurses and other very highly skilled people.

The ombudsman, however, stressed that people don’t necessarily have to be a college degree holder to get an H1-B visa as there are other ways to meet the requirement.

“For instance, I know for sure that Sir Lanka is like this and maybe Bangladesh as well, because you have a different type of educational system than we have in the states, if you graduate high school you may have the equivalent of a year or two of college degree level credit under the U.S. system,” he said.

Benedetto said the law allows for three years of experience to count toward one year of a person’s education.

“For instance, if you had two years of college in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, and you got six years of experience as an engineer in the CNMI or somewhere else, you may be qualified to get the H1-B,” he said.

The ombudsman said the H1-B visa is really the best one to have because it allows the worker to, under the dual intent, apply for a green card.

He said H1-B visa is different because the U.S. Congress made a policy decision that the United States needs highly skilled workers.

“We need more engineers, we need more computer programmers. Here is one of those occupational categories that is very lucky because you can come in and say ‘I want to come in and work and I will also apply for a green card’ and we will let you do it,” Benedetto said.

H2-B visas, on the other hand, are for temporary occupations, of which a vast majority of alien workers in the CNMI belong to. Benedetto said these are unskilled workers like cooks, waiters, landscapers or the people that work in the hotels, tourism industry or customer service.

Benedetto said those are supposed to be temporary jobs and the way the regulations under the Immigration and Naturalization Act interpret it, temporary means no more than a year.

“I know that some of you are working for hotels, or for airlines and you’re in occupational categories that would normally be considered H2-B. But your employers need you all the time, not just temporarily for a year at a time,” he said.

Benedetto said there is a problem under this category because the Department of Homeland Security is drafting regulations that give some flexibility to this type of occupations.

“There’s going to have other solutions because under the current regulations as they apply to the United States mainland, you’re not allowed to re-hire the same person over and over every year. Only one year,” he said.

There is a third category—H2-A—which is for seasonal agricultural workers.

“That would be like farmers and things like that. There is no cap on them. So we don’t have to worry that we might not get a slot,” he said.

He said an employer could sponsor a farmer who fits the normal requirements of an H2-A visa.

Another way that alien workers could get a more permanent status to work in the CNMI is what the new law calls the Commonwealth-Only Transitional Worker Program.

Benedetto said if an employer cannot qualify a worker under H1-B, H2-B or H2-A or any other existing visa category, the worker can still be authorized to work here in the CNMI under the Commonwealth-Only Transitional Worker Program.

“That means a guest worker program. It might look something like what we have now or it might be a lot simpler. It might be a lot more complex. Nobody knows really what that is going to look like because they have not drafted the regulations yet,” he said.

But as long as the transition period lasts, Benedetto stressed, the federally administered guest worker program will exist.

“My guess is that the vast majority of you that do not fit under H1-B, or H2-B or H2-A categories will probably qualify under the Commonwealth-Only Transitional Worker Program,” the ombudsman told participants in the forum.

Rep. Tina Sablan, who was also the other speaker at the forum, answered some of the questions and the status of House Bill 16-86.

Sablan told Saipan Tribune that the workers wanted to get an update on federalization and their hopes for improved status.

“I really was just there to give an update of where the bill is in the committee and also to talk about our briefing with the federal officials who came here last week and also to talk to them about the upcoming delegate election,” she said.

Coalition of United Workers vice-president Rabby Syed said they are very happy with the number of people who showed up.

“We designed this forum because there are a lot of people who have questions in their mind and they don’t know who to ask to get the right answer,” said Syed, who is also the president of the Saipan Taxi Association.

He said the forum gave clear answers as to what’s going to happen and how they can prepare themselves.

Coalition president Irene Tantiado said yesterday’s forum was just the second of a series that they intend to hold to educate guest workers on many issues.

Last June 28, the Coalition organized the same forum for the Filipino community.

“The next [forum] will be for the Chinese and Korean [community],” Tantiado said.

“Our main objective is to educate guest workers to tell them what they can expect or what they should be preparing because they have a lot of questions at this point and the only thing we can share with them is to educate them through the right people like Jim Benedetto and Rep. Tina Sablan.”

She said the issues are not necessarily just focused on federalization, but also questions on local labor, immigration, and unpaid wages.