US Senate passes HR 339 with only 350 CW-1 slots

The U.S. Senate passed on the evening of Aug. 1, 2017, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan’s (Ind-MP) bill that proposed to create more slots for foreign workers, along with other provisions relating to what is known as the CW-1 program.

H.R. 339, which had sought to bump up the CW-1 slots this fiscal year from 12,998 to 15,000, was passed unanimously with an amendment to open up only 350 CW-1 slots as opposed to the initial proposal of 2,002.

Sablan’s bill also increases the supplemental education fee from $150 to $200 and to allow the extension of permits for construction workers to those that were issued before Oct. 1, 2015.

The substantial decrease in number of CW-1 slot openings was the result of a joint amendment offered by U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

The amendment includes reserving 60 CW-1 slots for healthcare workers, and 10 permits for power plant operators. The recent surge of construction workers, using CW permits, forced hospital nurses to leave the Marianas and many local businesses to lose their long-time foreign workers.

HR 339 goes back to the U.S. House of Representatives for action. If the House makes no further amendments, it will head straight to President Donald J. Trump for his signature.

According to a statement from Sablan’s office, the provision of the bill to open up additional CW-1 slots was “a hard sell.”

“There are 2,400 unemployed U.S. workers in the Marianas, according to a Commonwealth government survey, and we were asking for more foreign workers. That was a hard sell,” the office stated, adding that Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations plaguing the CNMI “made a number of senators skeptical of adding more workers.”

“In fact, there is a sentiment on both sides of the aisle that the foreign worker program should not be extended,” added the statement, referring to the “…death and injury of workers, employers who were cheating workers on their paychecks, and outright illegal hiring of ‘tourists’ for construction jobs.”

In addition to that skepticism, the statement attributed the bill’s slow progress in Congress to the debate about repealing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

“No legislation was going through the Senate until healthcare was resolved,” the statement explained. “[Healthcare] was resolved on Friday and two days later we got HR 339 passed.”

The bright side

Despite the amendments that lowered the number of slots available to the CNMI, Sablan’s office said the reserved slots for healthcare professionals was something the “Commonwealth government [had] advocated for.”

The statement said the additional in fees for CW-1 processing adds more resources toward local workers.

“This is an important development in the Marianas transitional immigration system, as it is adding more money to the $9.9 million already invested in training our local workers,” reads part of the statement, citing that the construction worker problem that took up a large number of CW-1 slots could have gone to more critical professions.

According to the statement from Sablan’s office, the CNMI government has received an accumulated total of $9.9 million over the years from the CW-1 program.

“And I wanted to make sure that the problem of construction workers using up CW permits, crowding out long-time workers and hurting our local businesses, did not occur again,” Sablan added.

Separately, Gov. Ralph DLG Torres thanked Murkowski and Cantwell for “their work in holding a hearing for the bill and for meeting with me in Washington, D.C. to discuss their concerns and the needs of our community.”

A statement from Torres said the passage of the bill is “positive to the community” and that further attention must be focused on “long-term solutions to the workforce needs of our growing economy.”

“This includes stepping up our efforts in recruiting and training our local workforce, making sure our hospital will continue to have the nurses it needs, and our businesses will continue to have the workers they need.”

The statement cited a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in late May 2017, which basically said that removing the CW-1 permits would “have a drastically negative effect on our economy and our livelihood as a community.”

Senate President Arnold I. Palacios (R-Saipan), said that legislation to address the CW-1 issues in the long-term is already being worked on in collaboration with “different public and private sector [entities].”

With the passage of H.R. 339 at the U.S. Senate, Palacios said, “We’ll take what we’ve got today.”

“We know the clock is ticking toward the end of [fiscal year 2017]. Hopefully, [H.R. 339] would resolve some of the issues facing the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and its nursing shortage,” said Palacios.

“We are hoping it [would be acted on by the U.S. Congress] fairly soon,” he added.