New CW extension bill; blunt call for Labor to decide ‘soon’

As frustration grows with the federal government’s lack of a decision allowing the CNMI’s continued access to foreign workers after Dec. 31, 2014, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) not only introduced last week a standalone bill extending the so-called CW program by five years but also asked U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez during a congressional hearing to “make a decision soon.”
Sablan’s bluntest public statement so far states that the U.S. Department of Labor “has been unable, or unwilling to make a decision” for “14 months.”

Gov. Eloy S. Inos himself “was hopeful that a decision would have been rendered by this time,” press secretary Angel Demapan said yesterday, following the governor’s meeting with Perez at a White House event in Washington, D.C. in February.

“Governor Inos echoes Congressman Kilili’s request for an immediate decision on the CW extension,” Demapan told Saipan Tribune.

Sablan introduced H.R. 4296, amending U.S. Public Law 94-241, to extend the CNMI’s immigration transition period by five years or up to Dec. 31, 2019. The bill has been referred to the U.S. House Committees on Natural Resources and Judiciary.

This is the same language contained in Sablan’s Omnibus Territories Act or HR 2200 and its Senate companion, S. 1237. Sablan said both bills are moving slowly because they contain other changes to territorial law, some of which are controversial.

“So I have decided to improve chances of enacting the transition extension with a standalone bill, H.R. 4296. This is the same strategy that worked with the transfer of ownership of submerged lands,” Sablan said.

By extending the transition period by five years, the CNMI’s tourism industry will be protected “by preventing claims of asylum in the Northern Marianas by persons who enter under parole status,” he said.

Under U.S. law, the U.S. Labor secretary is required to make a decision by July 4 whether to extend the transitional Commonwealth-only worker program or let it end this year.

If a decision is made as late as July, that would only leave some five months for the CNMI to do the impossible. That is, to fill the 10,000 jobs that will be left vacant with U.S. workers right away and that means producing hundreds of experienced nurses, engineers, architects, teachers, certified public accountants, construction workers, hotel workers, and even caregivers.

This, at a time when new hotels, a Saipan casino, and other facilities will be built to meet the tourism industry’s growing demand.

Sablan said that waiting for the last minute to decide on the CNMI’s requested CW extension leaves businesses uncertain whether they will have “an adequate number of workers” and make them invest less.

“Then there’s the humanitarian concern…because waiting until the last minute leaves 9,617 foreign workers hanging in the breeze. Many of these people have lived in the Northern Marianas for decades. They have families and homes there. If they have to be gone by the end of this year, we owe them the courtesy of letting them know as soon as possible,” Sablan told Perez at the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee’s hearing on U.S. Labor’s fiscal year 2015 budget last week.

Sablan also reminded the U.S. Labor secretary that the annual number of foreign workers permitted is not the CNMI government’s decision but that of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

For this year, DHS capped the number of foreign workers in the CNMI at 14,000.

“That’s a long way from zero,” Sablan said.

He said his office has also reached out to U.S. Labor, asking for technical assistance to the CNMI to train U.S. workers and prepare for the completion of the transition “in a way that keeps our economy whole and does not put the jobs of U.S. workers in that economy at risk.”

“And the uncertainty—in the absence of your decision—is not helping. I hope you will take my words to heart,” Sablan told Perez at the committee hearing.

It was initially thought that the U.S. Labor secretary would decide last year. But in the past months, there were calls from certain sectors of the CNMI asking the federal government not to extend the CW program.

The CNMI House of Representatives also passed a resolution in November rejecting improved immigration status for long-term foreign workers in the CNMI, contained in both U.S. Senate and House bills on national immigration reforms.

Sablan, in an email, said when he met with Perez later in the afternoon after the congressional hearing, the Labor secretary did not give a specific reason why the department has not decided as quickly as he would like.

“But, of course, the Secretary is well aware that there is opposition to the extension in the Northern Marianas, including Resolution 18-34, passed by the Northern Marianas House of Representatives. And he, and others in the Obama Administration, have to take that opposition very seriously,” Sablan told Saipan Tribune.

He reiterated that the CNMI does not have 9,716 local workers to replace 9,716 CW permit holders or foreign workers by the end of the year. This figure on the number of foreign workers with CW permits is based on DHS data.

“If those workers all have to leave, businesses will close and the local workers they employ will be out of a job. We need to continue the steady reduction in foreign workers. But, as the Government Accountability Office has advised Congress, ‘any substantial and rapid decline in the availability of CNMI-only work permits for foreign workers would have a negative effect on the economy,” Sablan said in a separate statement.

Most of the foreign workers in the CNMI are from the Asian countries of the Philippines and China.