Touchback needs a Hail Mary pass—Chamber

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce acknowledged that nothing short of a miracle will delay the touchback provision of the Northern Marianas Islands U.S. Workforce Act or Public Law 115-218 that takes effect at the end of the current fiscal year in September 2023.

Speaking before members of the Chamber during yesterday’s general membership meeting at the Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan, board of director Alex Sablan said a delay in the touchback rule could only happen if an amendment that provides this successfully piggybacks on the National Defense Authorization Act.

“Touchback is something that’s an 11th hour Hail Mary call with the NDAA. There’s a slight chance there could be an amendment made. That is the only bill that we’re going to be able to jump on this fiscal year,” he said.

Sablan, who chairs the Chamber’s Tourism and Commerce Committee, recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. where their group lobbied Congress for a delay in the touchback rule, along with other pertinent issues affecting the CNMI. He was accompanied by Chamber president Joe C. Guerrero, Commonwealth Ports Authority chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds as well as representatives of the Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Society for Human Resource Management-NMI Chapter, among others.

“I wish we had better answers for you about what touchback is going to do and mean. At the end of the day, we are waiting on calls from the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. …We’ve written letters to our governor and [Delegate Gregori Kilili C. Sablan] on several different issues that we could possibly tackle,” he said.

Ultimately, Sablan’s advice to businesses with foreign workers, or CW-1, affected by the touchback issue is to prepare as if it’s a foregone conclusion.

“As we’ve heard from our secretary of Labor and other individuals in the community, don’t hold out as we need to be planning on touchback because, again, it’s going to take a Hail Mary [pass] to have anything changed,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sablan said they also met with staff from Guam Delegate James Moylan’s (D-GU) office during their door-knocking sortie in the nation’s capital and might have struck a eureka moment during the visit.

“[We’re] looking at the opportunity to see if there could be—this is outside-the-box thinking—about a One Marianas H2B-esque visa if we are to move away from [the CW program]. We need some type of visa that will work within the Marianas for day laborers, which is really what is a necessity in augmenting our need for a labor force in the Commonwealth,” he said.

Sablan went on to say that the neighboring U.S. territory has been using an H2B-esque type visa which allows individuals to work outside the “U.S. military fence” if there is a particular project that has nexus to be used in the current military buildup in Guam.

“That’s what we would like to jump on if it’s an annual requirement that’s going to need to move labor down beyond 2029. The idea is to use the military component as the nexus to justify the labor issues,” he said, adding that the construction of military bases on Tinian could be the perfect nexus for such a proposal.

The Chamber official also presented the hardships the CNMI has gone through the past couple of years for the powers-that-be in Washington, D.C. to be amenable to such a proposal.

Just in 2016-2017, the CNMI’s gross domestic product was over $1 billion, but in the two years since, overall economic activity on the islands have precipitously dropped to $940 million in 2018 to a mere $661 million in 2020, he said. The CNMI also went from 27,000 workers in 2019 to just 23,000 by 2020.

Sablan also floated the idea of initiating 902 talks with the U.S. government to help solve the CNMI’s current labor woes.

Section 902 of the CNMI’s Covenant with the U.S. allows for periodic consultations between the Commonwealth and federal governments “on all matters affecting the relationship between them.”

Guerrero also shared that their trip to Washington, D.C. had a silver lining as they were able to get the ear of the White House when it comes to looking for administrative solutions to CW applications affected by the touchback.

He said they were assured about the streamlining and shortening of the processing period from the projected 6-8 months for affected CW applicants.