Chamber supports including PH in Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program

Saipan Chamber of Commerce Tourism and Commerce Committee chair Alex Sablan delivers his committee report during yesterday’s General Membership Meeting at the Kensington Hotel Saipan. (MARK RABAGO)

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce supports including the Philippines on the list of countries that are being proposed for the Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program.

“There is an ongoing effort by Guam and the CNMI to look at the idea of adding to our CNMI-Guam Visa Waiver Program the country of the Philippines. It makes a lot of sense, I guess, for all of us. Guam has a large Filipino population and we have a large Filipino population. I think, you know, the issue of going from point A to point B and back—from a tourism standpoint, from an employer standpoint, from an employee’s [standpoint], from a medical standpoint—it makes all the sense in the world. …So we’d like to jump onboard with Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero, who’s advocating for this,” said Chamber board of director Alex Sablan, who chairs the business group’s Tourism and Commerce Committee during yesterday’s General Membership Meeting at the Kensington Hotel Saipan.

He said the Chamber already had discussions with Guam Sen. William Parkinson, who introduced Senate Resolution 14-37 that “urges Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero to petition the Department of Homeland Security to add Filipinos within the list of Guam-only visa-free travel.”

“We’d like to continue the conversation with our governor and our leaders and so that’s something we’d like to bring to [Washington,] D.C. as a conversation piece. And again, we’re hopeful that we can continue to collaborate with the administration and collaborate with [Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan],” he added.

Postponed DC trip

As for the planned trip to Washington, D.C., Alex Sablan said the Chamber had to postpone it to late June or early July due to Typhoon Mawar.

He reiterated the need to rally support to delay by three years the “touchback provision” of the Northern Marianas Islands U.S. Workforce Act (Public Law 115-218).

“It’s tough to have a conversation about lobbying or the idea of continuing CW workforce efforts whenever we have a lot of unemployed individuals in the Commonwealth, but the numbers don’t lie,” he said.

At the height of the local economy, the CNMI had 27,000 workers, with 16,000 U.S. citizens-eligible workers, Alex Sablan said.

“We want to see the numbers go up. We need a strong CW-1 workforce, along with a strong U.S. citizen workforce. … Quite frankly, that balance has been somewhere in the neighborhood of mid-50% for U.S. citizen workforce and mid-40% for CW, so that strikes the balance in the Commonwealth. Whether we’ll see 27,000 workers in the Commonwealth going forward remains to be seen,” he said.

Alex Sablan also said the delay in the touchback provision is not an immigration issue.

“We’re advocating more for commerce. We’re really not focused on the immigration aspect of this. This is about the survival of our economy. I know it is a tough juggling act for many of us in this sector…,” he said.

While understanding the Department of Labor’s effort to prioritize U.S. citizens in the workforce, he said there’s also a need to focus on the numbers game in the sense that the CNMI will have a total workforce, which includes a healthy balance of CW-1 workers, especially as it pertains to the construction industry.

“We are pushing the effort to communicate with our delegate…Kilili. We have a meeting sometime this week. We’re hoping that the [Chamber] board of directors [is] able to vocalize our issues related to the workforce. We have nearly $2 billion in development coming so we need 3,000 construction workers as a prime example. An H-2B is not the answer for our construction efforts in this region,” said Alex Sablan.