Chamber to DHS: Deliver us from uncertainty

Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Douglas Brennan told U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday that the delayed release of the transitional worker regulations “is so unfair to so many that have made their corporate and literal lives” in the CNMI.

Nov. 27, 2011, is the last day of the two-year grace period that the federalization law allows. After that, everyone who does not have some immigration status issued by the U.S. government—like the Commonwealth-only worker status whose regulations have yet to be released—will be “out of status” and subject to deportation.

“The Saipan Chamber of Commerce, on behalf of our membership, our business community and the thousands of employees and their dependents and residents, beseeches the Department of Homeland Security to please deliver us from this uncertainty,” Brennan said in a June 7 letter to Napolitano.

The Chamber is the largest business organization in the CNMI with 151 members.

Brennan, who is also general manager of Microl Corp., said with only 25 weeks to go, the Chamber does not have a hint of when the regulations will be issued.

“People need to plan their lives, companies need to plan and estimate their investments and budgets, and the combination of those literally determine the economy of the CNMI. How can businesses and residents expect to live and survive when they are unaware of what is expected of them just 195 days around from now?” he asked.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan, the CNMI’s first nonvoting delegate to the U.S. Congress, as well as Interior Secretary for Insular Affairs Tony Babauta, said there is no telling when DHS will be able to issue the worker regulations.

This has been frustrating and upsetting employers, employees, prospective foreign and local investors, and many others in the community.

The uncertainty caused by federalization is adding to the problems of a sputtering CNMI economy.

Brennan, in his two-page letter to Napolitano, said businesses continue to depend on workers from outside the CNMI. But they can only recruit from abroad when there is no available worker within the CNMI, or any other U.S. area.

With U.S. Public Law 110-229, the law that placed CNMI immigration under federal control on Nov. 28, 2009, Brennan said CNMI businesses are adjusting to new regulations. He said some CNMI companies have already assisted essential workers in petitioning for new federal employment visas.

“There are a greater number of employees, with their assisting companies, that would not qualify for those employment visas, but who are allowed to remain in the CNMI through the transition period to work. These employees, and the companies that employ them, are painfully awaiting the issuance of those DHS transitional Commonwealth-only worker regulations. It is 25 weeks until the CW-1 regulations take effect and we have not a hint of when they will be issued,” Brennan added.

Copies of the letter were also sent to the CNMI delegate, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, Interior’s Babauta, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Director Alejandro Mayorkas.