‘New investors could’ve used H visas’

New investors could have used the H visa category when it came to hiring foreign construction workers that would support their ongoing projects on Saipan instead of getting them also under the CNMI-Only Transition Worker nonimmigrant visa or CW program, which has a cap of 12,998 for fiscal year 2017.

Last Friday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the CW-1 numerical limit had already been reached, even though there are still 10 months left in the new fiscal year.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) believes this could have been avoided had only these new businesses hired H workers for construction jobs since it has an unlimited cap for the CNMI.

“Construction workers that were hired as CW-1s eat up the cap but getting them under the H visas is basically the most immediate solution to this issue,” he said.

Worse, the local Department of Labor has granted some of these new companies waivers on the law that requires 30 percent local hires.

Despite having only 15 session days in Congress, Sablan said the congressional committee staff has been asking him on every detail of the CW-1 program, like which companies avail of these waivers, how many employees, and how many CW-1 workers are going to be affected.

The CNMI has an average of 9,000 existing CW-1 employees under a continuously shrinking cap.

Sablan said these new investors were granted U.S.-local hire exemptions that could have been used for the renewals of professionals or skilled workers. Some of these new businesses were granted two-year waivers where they are not even required to comply with the 30 percent local hire.

“Around 1,800 went to foreign [construction] workers. That is why we hit the cap last May and again this week. It could have been avoided if the government had ground rules with the new investors. The CNMI could have not allowed the waiver. The one that are suffering are local businesses and the long-time foreign workers,” said Sablan.

He said what the government could do is to withdraw all of the waivers and let these investors comply with the 30 percent local hire requirement. That would mean more jobs for local residents and at the same time free the CW-1 cap that could benefit all businesses.

The administration said in a statement that the last exemption waiver that was issued was in May of this year. “Since then, there has been a moratorium on granting exemptions at the direction of the governor. The exemptions are only for the 30 percent local hire requirement. Even without the exemptions, the CW cap would still be encumbered by the large presence of construction workers, which is something the governor has tried to limit but is ultimately a decision of USCIS and not the local government,” the Office of the Governor statement said.

Sustaining development

Sablan said the local government must learn from the past in order to avoid the same thing that happened when the clothing and garment industries were thriving in the CNMI. That did not end well after factories closed one at a time based on issues on trade and high labor costs in the Commonwealth.

“I just wish that we had learned from that. The local government must manage the growth in our islands, which can only sustain so much development. There’s a $13- billion proposal on Saipan and Tinian and another multibillion-dollar investment on Rota. How much development can we sustain?”

Sablan said the effects of the continued developments would soon strain the island’s infrastructure. “We will all suffer. We are seeing traffic, there will be an increased use in water and other utilities, and there are only two sewer processing plants on the island. The power plant is over 40 years old. If we get all these developers hooked up, what will happen?”