Stories of a business owner and guest worker

Let me tell you the stories of my two friends who are both in Saipan. One owns a business and the other one is a guest worker from the Philippines. As a business policy, my businessman friend is not hiring CW workers. They just hire U.S. citizens. He told me that the reason is because he has heard about the challenges of processing new CW and even the renewal of CW visa. He doesn’t want to have to go through any of those.

I saw him again recently. He is already on his second year of doing business in CNMI. The good news is that his business is doing great and by now, he has already a number of customers who come to his establishment regularly. The bad news is that he cannot have enough workers. They are always short of staff. When they had to terminate several staff because of serious wrongdoing, the remaining workers had to work double shift just to make sure their establishment remains open. They tried to hire but only a few people applied and most of them were not willing to work the night shift. This month, one of their managers quit to go back to U.S. mainland. My friend placed a sizable ad in the two local newspapers but nobody applied. He is struggling to find workers. The workers he has now are Filipinos, Nepalese, and Chinese who became U.S. citizens and only few locals.

My other friend came to Saipan more than 20 years ago along with her elder sister. Just like the other guest workers who have been in CNMI that long, this place became their home. A few years ago, the elder sister had to go back to the Philippines because her CW application was denied. At that time, she was just recovering from breast cancer. She came back to Saipan to start over again because all her savings was gone. She had to stop working for more than a year while undergoing treatment and she also spent a lot of money for hospital bills, etc. She was devastated that she was leaving the place she called home and more so, she was afraid that there was nothing for her back home. She is not young anymore and almost for sure will not be able to find a job in the Philippines because of her age and condition.

My friend stayed here so she can earn money to help her elder sister. She is also supporting her children back home. While she was able to send most of her children to college, she does not have spare money to save. Just the other day, her employer told them that their CW renewal was not submitted before the announcement of USCIS that the cap is already reached. She cannot sleep at night thinking what will happen to her and her family. Just like her sister, she is not young anymore. It will be difficult to find a job back home. She told me that it feels like an impending death.

These are true stories. I’m sure most of us if not all of us have friends like them. What are we doing to help them or we just don’t care at all?

Irene Nepomuceno
Puerto Rico