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Blanco: Department heads at work on CW data plan
Concerns about the impending expiration of the contract worker program in 2019 were the focus yesterday of a Cabinet meeting with acting governor Ralph DLG Torres and other department and agency heads, according to press secretary Ivan Blanco.
Both Commerce and Labor departments are working together to find out “what have in our labor force” and “our projected need beyond 2019,” he said.
“They are putting together an argument that the need [for contract workers] still remains beyond 2019,” Blanco told Saipan Tribune yesterday.
He said Labor, Commerce, and the U.S. Department of the Interior are working on the issue.
According to Blanco, Public Lands Secretary Pete A. Tenorio also commented that the CW issue would affect future land use policy.
In October, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced 1,000-count cut in the number of contract workers allowed in the CNMI, a move seen by business leaders as troubling given that the projected need for labor to meet multi-billion dollar projects in the CNMI far exceeds the number of needed workers projected and on the ground.
The limit for CW permits for fiscal year 2016 is set at 12,999, a drop of 1,000 from last fiscal year’s 13,999 cap.
Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) said the USCIS decision is a reminder that the number of CW workers will continues to decrease over the next four years “and that everyone in the [Northern] Marianas—business, government, and the educational system—will have to work overtime to replace this foreign labor with U.S. workers or with foreign workers who have some status other than CW.”
That means hiring workers with H or other employment-based visas and workers from the Freely Associated States, who have the ability to immigrate to and live in the Northern Marianas, he said.
The Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 extended U.S. immigration law to the Northern Marianas and provided the special CW category for foreign workers during an initial transition period of five years, which was extended through 2019 in December last year with the enactment of Public Law 113-235.
There are reportedly close to 11,000 CW workers in the CNMI right now.
