CNMI gets $400,000 from USCIS

Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos said yesterday that the CNMI government received this week a wire transfer of $400,000 from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the “$150 CNMI education funding fee” that employers pay for each foreign worker they intend to hire.

This represents roughly 24 percent of the estimated over $1.652 million in expected education funding fees to be collected by the CNMI based on the 11,019 foreign workers covered in Commonwealth-only worker petitions filed as of Dec. 9.

Moreover, this is the first wire transfer from USCIS to the CNMI government. The first time was a $22,000 check personally handed by a USCIS official to the CNMI government.

Inos said money collected from the education funding fee will go to both the Public School System and Northern Marianas College to help with their vocational education and training programs to boost the local labor pool as required by the law that placed CNMI immigration under federal control.

The money is supposed to be used by the CNMI to train U.S. workers who will fill the void left by foreign workers who left or will leave the Commonwealth. Most private sector jobs are held by foreign workers, while government jobs are mostly held by U.S. workers.

The fiscal year 2012 budget law requires at least $500,000 of this fee to go to PSS.

But Inos said the administration has yet to provide money to either PSS or NMC out of the education funding fee that employers started paying since October for each foreign worker they hire.

“We are going to sit down with them, ask them for a spending plan or how they are going to use it.It’s a standard thing,” Inos told Saipan Tribune in an interview at the ribbon cutting for Sandy Beach Homes yesterday morning.

Inos, who oversees government finances, said after the administration receives and approves PSS and NMC’s spending plan, they will be later on asked to report how they actually used the money.

“They should be consistent with the spending plan. That’s the extent of the accountability,” he added.

Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan), in a separate interview yesterday, said his pending House Bill 17-218 will help direct where and how the money from this particular fee should be divided. This is on top of the requirements of FY 2012 budget law.

Yumul said his bill is a “percentage-based formula.”

“PL 17-55 budget law stops allocation when it expires Sept. 30, 2012,” he added.

Yumul’s bill, under review by the House Ways and Means Committee, seeks to allocate over $3 million in expected money from the employers’ education funding fee. But Yumul got this estimate from the 22,416 in numerical cap for foreign workers in fiscal year 2012, and not on the estimated number of foreign workers potentially eligible for CW status.

Cleanup

In other news, personnel from the Office of the Governor and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor cleaned up yesterday morning an area from San Jose to Susupe as part of their “adopt-a-highway” program.

Inos, who helped with the cleanup yesterday morning, said the cleanup is a volunteer program.

He said for those interested, the cleanup is only during Friday morning, which has become an austerity Friday. Last week, the portion they cleaned up was from the area in front of Iglesia ni Kristo to the Dandan Shell area.

Inos said besides helping to clean up the environment, the program also seeks to instill the spirit of volunteerism among employees. He hopes that other agencies and organizations will follow suit.