‘Govt must get its act together’

With the Commonwealth now granted the five-year extension it has been seeking for the CW program, it should now start making an honest and serious effort to train its U.S. worker pool to eventually replace the 10,000 foreign workers come the 2019 new deadline of the program.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) said the U.S Department of Labor yesterday issued a notice in the Federal Register making official Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez’s decision to extend the transition period until 2019. The publication of that decision in the Register gives it “the force of law,” said Sablan.

The Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies can now move forward and carry out their responsibilities to implement the program for the Northern Marianas, he added.

The notice about the CW program also explained in greater detail why Perez decided to extend the transition for five years.

“Conclusions by economic policy experts of the U.S. Department of Labor should actually end the debate in the Northern Marianas whether the extension is necessary. As an example, what happens to our economy if we get rid of all foreign workers? The [U.S.] Labor Department looked at all the available studies, which I quote, ‘unanimously concluded that restrictions on the foreign labor supply would exacerbate the CNMI’s current economic problems and restrain economic growth.’”

In other words, Sablan said, experts at U.S. Labor determined that if the CNMI’s CW program ends by Dec. 31, 2014, the islands’ “economy will suffer and it will lead to higher prices, fewer jobs for U.S. workers, less revenue for the government to pay the retirement, the schools, and healthcare.”

The delegate said U.S. Labor looked at other alternatives to the CW program and determined that there were no other visa categories that would replace the CW status.

“Non-immigrant visa waiver program under the Immigration and Nationality Act are not adequate substitutes for the CW program because the jobs that CNMI businesses fill with CW workers are not temporary or seasonal in nature and thus cannot be filled by H2B temporary non-agricultural workers and are not in a specialty occupation suitable for H1B temporary workers.”

Labor also looked at whether there are enough unemployed local workers to take over foreign workers’ jobs if the CW program is not extended and found out that there are an insufficient number of U.S. workers in the CNMI to fill all the jobs held by foreign workers.

“So even if every unemployed local U.S. worker is willing to take a job and had the skills or could be trained…more than 10,000 jobs would still need to be filled by foreign workers.”

Crunch time

With exactly 2,035 days left before the CW program’s extension ends, Sablan said the CNMI government should do everything in its power to train the local workforce and place them in jobs to sustain recent strides in the economy.

“Now we have to focus our attention to action. We have five years. So the Commonwealth has to become even more aggressive in training and placing local workers at jobs. The Commonwealth, our government, and that includes our Legislature, should establish programs, provide the funding, and make available and support programs for training and this would be helped by the gradual increase of the minimum wage, $6.05 by the beginning of October this year and U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 by 2018.”

The CNMI government and private businesses should also keep in mind that the number of CW worker permits will go down every year.

“For the next five years it will decrease. So in addition to hiring local workers, businesses should become more efficient on how they utilize foreign workers. Productivity has to increase. We have to do a lot in the next five years and, of course, the secretary of Labor will be watching. He has asked the governor for annual updates beginning next year to make sure there are good faith efforts to put U.S. workers in jobs.”

Dearth of workers

Sablan said he has no idea how the winning bid for the exclusive license to build an integrated casino resort on Saipan will be able to get enough workers to build and ultimately man the new facility.

“This program is ending in 2019. Anyone who thinks they can build a 2,000-room casino here, they better have an idea on how they’re going to provide employees for that. It’s not my problem. I’m not the one building the casino and I’m not the one who made a promise. Ask them.”

Sablan also said that training local workers in advance of the 2019 deadline would be best served if the Legislature were less politicized.

“The Legislature has to get serious. Many of our legislators here keep saying ‘U.S. workers here need to work’ but they’re not providing the money to train these people. They have to put their money where their mouth is. For them to politicize this issue and talk, talk, and talk does not produce workers. They need to become serious. We obviously have to do more with less after 2019. The Legislature passed resolutions in the past that said they don’t need foreign workers. They made statements saying no immigration reform so they must have all the answers. I’ve done my part. It’s now their part.”

Automatic extension

The CNMI Society for Human Resources Management, meanwhile, is requesting the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to give foreign workers under the CW program an automatic one-year extension.

“The HR community is eagerly awaiting guidance on how to proceed with the renewal process for employees whose CW-1 visas are expiring in the coming months and in December of this year. We hope that the USCIS would give automatic extensions for a complete one-year visa period for all those CW-1 visa holders that were petitioned in 2014 prior to the announcement of the extension. We also hope that the guidance would include the provision that allows continuing employment for workers whose CW-1 visas are being extended,” said SHRM president Malou Ernest.