‘CWs vital to tourism industry’

With only six days remaining until most CNMI-Only Transitional Worker permits expire, the Marianas Visitors Authority board of directors expressed great concerns as these workers play an important role to the islands’ tourism industry.

MVA board chair Marian Aldan-Pierce said that the service industry is human resource reliant and that if the CNMI loses these workers, it would have a heavy impact on the CNMI economy.

“If we do not have the people to properly service our visitors and our businesses, then we will not have a sufficient economy,” she said. She emphasized that the importance of the CW renewal process, which is on a timely basis, must be understood as it plays a vital role in the CNMI economy.

There have been issues regarding the renewals of the CW permits and Aldan-Pierce said that the MVA and the CNMI government are working on this issue in Washington, D.C. She said that there are various business organizations that are lobbying and meeting with as many people as they can to show them the true impact of the loss of CW workers in the islands.

Like many hotels in the CNMI, Saipan World Resort is bound to lose CW workers whose renewal applications are still pending, according to its Human Resources manager Jun Ham.

“It will be extremely difficult for most hotels to maintain the quality of service with the loss of these essential positions that the CW workers have in the hotels,” he said.

“Departments affected are maintenance, construction, and housekeeping…these are mostly filled by CW workers and these are integral departments in the hotel business… the service side which include food & beverage and kitchen will suffer the most,” he added.

Last week, other hotels disclosed that they are expecting to lose hundreds of CW workers that will push these establishments to minimize services like closing down in-house restaurants, limit accommodations, and also authorize overtime work for other workers that will be left behind.

“World Resort hotel has been employing U.S. workers for the past 10 years and that is why we have a high rate of local workers… we are continuously hiring locals, but there are times we can’t get enough local workers and this is what our CW workers fill in,” Ham said.

While U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could still approve an extension to the Sept. 30, 2019 CW application deadline, Ham wants to stay objective.

“We are not counting on hope because in the hotel business, we cannot make plans based on hope… we will try to survive and any word or update from USCIS, we will be keeping our eyes on it,” he said.

Aldan-Pierce said the issue with the entire CW process is that the federal government must understand that the CNMI does not have enough people to fill all of the positions that the service industry requires.

“It is difficult for somebody who has never lived or been on an island, and has never owned a business on island to really understand what they’re doing to us,” she said.

Among the struggles of the service industry is numerous businesses tag along with the waiting process in order to avoid having their CW employees be forced to exit without the possibility to return.

Saipan Tribune was able to get two separate interviews with hotel employees that requested anonymity regarding the expiration of the CW-1 permits.

The first worker has two U.S. citizen children, one who is currently attending high school and the other attending middle school. The uncertainty of the situation behind the CW-1 process has left him and his wife no choice but to exit, leaving them with the choice to either bring their children or have them stay with his brother’s family for the time being.

Meanwhile, the second worker, is hoping that House Resolution 560 would pass as she has been working in the CNMI for over 15 years. She has a U.S. citizen daughter who will be graduating from high school this year and she does not want to leave her daughter alone, especially in times like this where everyone in the CNMI is struggling financially with the austerity measures observed by the government and some private entities.

H.R. 560, which proposes to provide permanent resident status to long-term foreign workers in the CNMI, or CW workers, was marked up at the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources with only one amendment. It passed the committee with no opposition, setting the stage for the bill to be taken up on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.