WH help eyed in CW extension

With barely a month before the July 4 deadline and still no word from U.S. Labor Secretary Perez whether or not he will extend the CW program beyond Dec. 31, 2014, Gov. Eloy S. Inos said yesterday he’s considering seeking “help” from the Interagency Group on Insular Areas that the White House co-chairs.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), who just got back from Washington, D.C., separately said yesterday there’s no update from Perez’s office on the CNMI’s request to extend the CW program by five years or up to 2019.

“I think all we’re waiting for is the announcement of a decision that I said has been made; that’s what I have been told,” Sablan said in an interview at the Memorial Day ceremony at the CNMI Veterans Cemetery in Marpi.

Inos wrote a May 13 letter to Perez, reiterating his request for the U.S. Labor secretary to extend the CW program. In his letter, Inos said the potential adverse effects of zeroing-out the CNMI’s nonresident worker program at the end of this year will “devastate immediate and future economic and business growth in the CNMI.”

As of yesterday, the CNMI government has not received a letter from Perez’s office acknowledging the receipt of the governor’s letter.

Sablan said his office “made sure the letter got through.”

Inos said the CNMI has been in a wait-and-see mode for quite some time, still unsure whether the Commonwealth would still have immediate access to some 10,000 foreign workers after Dec. 31, 2014.

“I want to see if I can go through the Interagency folks at the White House to see if we can get any help. I’m not going to complain. I’m just going to ask for assistance,” he said, adding that the request for assistance would be through a letter, and not a visit to Washington, D.C.

The governor was referring to the Interagency Group on Insular Areas, with the Interior secretary and the White House director of Intergovernmental Affairs as co-chairs.

The IGIA improves coordination of federal policy in the CNMI, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

When asked whether he would consider writing directly to President Barack Obama, Inos said he would like to go through the IGIA first.

“It will reach the president’s attention,” Inos added.

When asked whether at this point the CNMI should hope for the best or prepare for the worst, Inos said “both.”

“Everyone’s affected—the employees, the community. If businesses start shutting down, you’re talking about eliminating or otherwise reducing services to the community so everyone would be affected,” he said, if the CW program is not extended.

The CNMI is trying to train and hire as many individuals as possible from the U.S. worker pool to replace foreign workers, but the number of available and qualified U.S. workers is still limited.

Inos said the CNMI continues to also employ those from the Freely Associated States or the Federated States of Micronesia.

“We consider them a pool of available workers but it’s going to take a lot of training. They would be considered the fallback worker pool,” he said, should foreign workers, mostly from the Philippines, are sent home after 2014.

Inos said he will be discussing the CW extension request with Sablan once again.

In his letter to Perez two weeks ago, Inos said the need to extend the CW program is especially critical at a time when plans are now underway to build 2,600 new hotel rooms—the first major projects initiated on the islands “in over a decade” that the governor hopes would “signal a turning point” for the local economy. 

If and when Perez announces a decision by the July 4 deadline, that would only be five months away from the end of the CW program on Dec. 31.

Sablan, along with Inos, has been pressing U.S. Labor to extend the CW program and make that decision public ahead of the July 4 deadline. Sablan also introduced omnibus territorial bills and a standalone bill to extend the CW program as option, in case U.S. Labor does not extend it administratively.

The governor pointed out that such a negative result on the economy would be in “clear violation” of the Congressional Intent of Section 701 (a) (1) (A) of U.S. Public Law 110-229, which calls for the “orderly phasing-out of the nonresident contract worker program of the Commonwealth.”