Kilili: USCIS finalizing rule on 240-day grace period

The proposal to have Commonwealth-only workers, or CW1 workers, be allowed to continue working for up to 240 days or eight months while their CW permit renewal applications are being processed is now being finalized.

This was according to Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), who told Saipan Tribune that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services informed him that the proposed 240-day grace period for timely filed CW1 renewals is in the final stages of being approved.

“USCIS said that staff is in the process of writing the final rule to provide authorization for continued employment of CW workers for whom an extension petition is timely filed,” he said.

Sablan, who was re-elected to a fourth term in Congress last Nov. 4, said, though, that USCIS is unable to provide a specific or anticipated date when the final rule will be out.

“The review and clearance process involves multiple agencies. USCIS assures me that I will be notified once the process is completed. And I have instructed my staff to follow up with the agency on a regular basis as congressional interest helps ensure the process moves forward as quickly as possible,” he said.

USCIS spokesperson Marie Thérèse Sebrechts confirmed this.

“The final rule has not yet been finalized. We’ll announce when it is,” she said.

She also stressed that workers in possession of CW1 visas expiring on Dec. 31, 2014, must cease working after that date. “You must have approval to work,” she told Saipan Tribune in an email.

During last Thursday’s Society for Human Resource Management CNMI Chapter’s 2014 Annual Conference, USCIS officer Diane Zedde alluded to the 240-day grace period for CW1 renewals but at that time said there was no development yet.

“As of yesterday afternoon [Dec. 17] when I was updating my information there’s still no information whether it’s gone into effect yet. That’s all I know. I have no specific information,” she told everyone in attendance at the event during the question-and-answer segment.

Chamber of Commerce president Alex Sablan, for his part, said the islands’ biggest business organization hopes that USCIS approve 240-day grace period proposal sooner than later.

“Hopefully it gets approved like all major decisions for the CNMI were made in the 11th hour. Thankfully they’ve been approved but it’s still an excruciating wait to say the least,” he said.

The major decisions Sablan was referring to is President Barrack Obama’s signing of H.R. 83, which extended the islands’ E-2C program, a bar on applications for asylum in the Northern Mariana Islands, and the exemption for Guam and the Northern Marianas from the national numerical cap on H visa.

Sablan also acknowledged the effort being done by Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan in having the 240-day grace period approved.

“We know Kilili’s office is working hard on this issue. We’re hopeful that the decision is made before the end of the year so employees who have to stop working can get back to work. We want to get this decision done so people can get back to work and we’ll have are economy flowing again.”