‘This is beyond politics’

To bring up issues that relates to the CNMI and Guam, the islands may be joining forces in a commission according to Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s Alex Sablan. He shared the discussions at the Chamber’s General Membership Meeting yesterday at the Pacific Island Club in San Antonio.

Sablan shared that he and Chamber board of Directors president Joe Deleon Guerrero who represented the private sector on Saipan, along with the Saipan Legislature had recently been a part of discussions held on Guam with the island’s Governor Lou Leon Guerrero, and Lt. Governor Josh Tenorio and members of the legislature there in a conversation about transportation, energy, health networks, food security, homeland security, education, labor, climate change, military, and economic recovery. “This is beyond politics, to say the least this is a conversation that’s being had amongst, hopefully, many and all of the leadership within government, along with private sectors, in support of moving the Commonwealth forward. And I want to emphasize, this is politics out the door. We are talking about specific issues that, hopefully, will resonate amongst the leadership of government, but also in this community. And specifically, we met now a couple of times, and the last time we met, we organized our conversational pieces, if you will, in our meeting.” He said

“These, yes, are a lot of subject matter, and it won’t be easy to tackle entirely in what is the next few months before elections, but it is a conversation to start, and I want to emphasize that. This has been a good conversation about issues that are kind of systemic within the Commonwealth, whether it be our energy problems with CUC, whether it be our workforce issues. And thanks, Department of Labor, for being here, and for your legislation… And reflective of focusing in on U.S. citizen workforce with, yes, while we much herald our workforce, we have to stipulate that for national workforce, we’re always meant to be augmenting the needs of our popular states, and I want to emphasize that. That’s because I think a lot of people in the conversation are being asked, that we have to focus in on the augmentation aspect and focus in on the U.S. citizen workforce aspect. And I think it’s the conversations that are going to be had about this coming forward. So we met with, as a concept, and I say concept because it was a concept provided to the Governor of Guam, the Governor of Guam, by the delegation, about formalizing a commission.” Said Sablan

He added that this concept was nothing new but had been one since over 60 years ago. “The Appalachian states, 13 of them, have an Appalachia commission. The governors of these states serve as commissioners. The President of the United States selects the chair, chairs, or chair, confirmed by the Senate. And the body of the Congress funds the commissions. There are five commissions within the United States. Alaska has one specifically, so that the counties within Alaska that deal with social economic conditions within rural and underserved localities within the nation. And we brought the concept to the Governor and she seemed to like the idea of formalizing a body that would identify some of these conversational pieces that are being asked to join the Marianas in one, in single goals.”

“And one of those goals we brought forward was the discussion about a Marianas Visa—again the concept.” Said Sablan “And we’re not picking on a process that doesn’t exist today. Currently, Guam uses an H-2B Visa and I call it H-2BS because it is not a, the Visa that we know about is utilized within the Digis 48 in Hawaii and Alaska. Guam is able to use 4,000 workers outside the Fence for military projects that have a nexus, meaning the military eventually will be able to use it.”

Furthermore he said “We did utilize some of this workforce within our project, but the level that Guam has and the Commonwealth is the shortage of workforce in that realm. And we know for a fact, we started Crowne Plaza Guam 10 months before we started Crowne Plaza Saipan. And we got Saipan done 10 months before Guam’s. And that’s because of workforce issues. That’s because we had to wait for outside the fence workers to come and work on the project to begin with. And it is exponentially raising the cost of construction in both regions. There are other reasons to this. Supply chain, cost of goods, but in large steps, the issue is manpower. And so, it’s one resonating process that we felt could be brought forward as a Marianas Commission, communicated through our 902 talks that are coming possibly. But on many fronts tackling a Mariana Visa that makes sense for the Mariana. A Visa that we can utilize that is transitioning, because we have been told by Congressman Gregorio Kilili Sablan, members of the GOP, members of the Democratic Party, people within the federal government, that we are transitioning from C.W. inevitably. So, what does that mean? So, we’re proposing a Mariana Visa, H-2B-S, maybe something like the C.W.1 in H-2B clothing, but we need to transition to something.”

“The hope is that we can develop this unification on this effort. And the reason we’re talking about unifying this visa with Guam is that Guam has a distinct, somewhat advantage, to allowing for the Guam governor to certify temporary labor certification for Guam. And this would be unique if we could bring what potentially are our thousands of CW visas, and what that number is will have to be determined down the line, but our thousands and their thousands equated to the visa fees, the education fees, coming into the Marianas. Our hope is that the Department of Labor agrees to providing us the opportunity to use the visa within the Marianas, bring it into our locale, process, and keep the revenue made within the Marianas. We’re talking about millions of dollars towards the process and millions of dollars towards workforce development for U.S. citizens and workers. That’s the idea behind it. Part of the concept would be to bring USCIS processing into the Marianas and allowing us to keep those fees here, again, for the same reason.” Said Sablan

“Sablan also shared that discussions on cabotage came up as well “We’re talking about essential air service for the CNMI-Guam, so the inter-island carriage. We need to reduce those costs to get our people between our islands more freely and cheaply.”

Philippine visa waivers and Medicaid also came up in the discussion “There is a growing sentiment that we need to more closely tie ourselves to a large marketplace that has the ability to be, yes, within the CMI and obviously our worker base, and transportation is essential for that effort.” In regards to Medicaid, Sablan said “The Medicaid cap was brought up as a conversation piece. The conversation with the governor about our Medicaid cap and the fact that these numbers just aren’t realistic for the region, seeing as how we have conditions within the Commonwealth that need addressing.”

Sablan encouraged the Chamber that if they’re interested, they should join in the discussion “So these are, again, some of these conversation pieces we’re having, and we’re hoping to move them forward. But if you like what you’re hearing, please come to our meetings, address these conversational pieces with us, and let’s have a conversation about how we address our issues going forward and solving these problems going forward.”