Inos, Kilili renew push for food stamps, FEMA aid to CW workers

Commonwealth government officials continued yesterday a unified push for the federal government to grant additional food stamp funding for Typhoon Soudelor victims, as well as to reconsider a position that rules out contract workers from receiving disaster relief aid.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials have found contract workers ineligible for individual disaster assistance.

Regional Food and Nutrition Service officials also denied last month the government’s request to expand food stamp guidelines to allow the use of about $6.5 million in “disaster” nutritional assistance funds. The officials instead allowed an amount of $1 million on Aug. 11. A week later, the officials came back to authorize the CNMI to use the rest of its grant award—estimated at $3.5 million.

The CNMI has since used up all of these funds when the Disaster Nutritional Assistance Program closed last week, serving the thousands of families who waited for hours in long lines at the local Nutrition Assistance Program office in As Lito. About 7,900 people registered for this disaster aid; about 90 were deemed ineligible.

Delegate Gregorio “Kilili” C. Sablan (Ind-MP) wrote back to Gov. Eloy S. Inos yesterday in regards to Inos’ request for the congressman’s help in getting disaster aid to CW visa holders and to get more funding for the disaster food assistance.

Inos’ letter to Sablan was sent a day after the DNAP program ended. It supported Sablan’s earlier call to obtain whatever federal funding the CNMI may need—beyond its yearly program grant—to respond to and aid victims of Typhoon Soudelor.

Sablan told Inos that the Food and Nutritional Service has advised him that it needs to receive from the CNMI a “specific amount of additional funding you anticipate needing.”

“The request should be based on your best estimate of the number of individuals and households you will assist and their project level of benefit during the remainder of the fiscal year,” Sablan wrote.

“This specific request from the Commonwealth is the next step in the process of obtaining supplemental funding,” Sablan said.

Press secretary Ivan Blanco confirmed they are working on this funding request amount, requesting for a figure from the local NAP director yesterday.

As for the concern regarding contract workers, Sablan attached another letter he wrote to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Sept. 4.

FEMA has informed Sablan that CW workers are not “qualified aliens” as defined by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Because of this, FEMA says they are ineligible to receive federal public benefits, including those provided by FEMA.

“USCIS, however, may have more specialized understanding of the status of CW workers that would allow FEMA to modify its exclusions,” Sablan said, in his letter to USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez.

Sablan’s point on a “specialized understanding” may have been referring to a point Inos made in his letter last week regarding federal officials’ knowledge of the CW program and its place among the various visa classes in the United States.

“While not widely known to much of FEMA or USCIS policy makers, the CW program is an important part of our community, and CW visa holders were not spared the damaging effects of Typhoon Soudelor,” Inos wrote last week.

Inos administration officials have said this exclusion of CW workers might be an act of unintended “oversight” by FEMA, or a misunderstanding of a program unique to the CNMI. The CW program is reported to have 10,000 workers living here.

In his letter to USCIS, Sablan said he and Inos share the concern that in recovering from Typhoon Soudelor, “all residents of the Northern Marianas Islands whose lives and homes have been damaged [should] receive every possible form of federal assistance.”

“Our community will only recover fully when every member of the community is needed,” Sablan said.