The Fitial administration will deport or repatriate guest workers who hold temporary work authorizations as part of efforts to stop the widespread illegal employment in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial described this group of workers as \u201clegitimate illegal workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he does not have the exact number of these illegal workers but said there are more than 3,000 people with TWAs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere [are] more than 3,000 [of them]. Those are the legitimate illegals,\u201d said Fitial during a news briefing Friday. \u201cWe are going to stop these illegal activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
While not exactly ruling out legitimate labor cases, Fitial said there have been TWA \u201cabuses\u201d such as filing of \u201cspurious\u201d complaints, which include grounds like \u201cI don\u2019t like my supervisor.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cited that there are workers who have been holding TWAs not temporarily but almost permanently\u2014for years.<\/p>\n
He said the previous estimate of illegal aliens was placed at about 2,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no official estimate but we have a lot more than before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Non-renewal of TWAs<\/p>\n
Fitial said the Department of Labor will not renew the existing TWAs, admitting that this has been an added burden to the cash-strapped government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to start not renewing them,\u201d said the governor.<\/p>\n
He said nonresidents with TWAs do not pay taxes.<\/p>\n
The governor has instructed Labor Secretary Gil M. San Nicolas \u201cto start working on the project so we can start trimming down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve asked the secretary to give me a list of how many TWAs will be deported this month, next month, and so forth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said those with \u201clegitimate cases\u201d will be heard but once resolved, they too will have to go. Legitimate cases refer to wages-related claims.<\/p>\n
Fitial said the Labor Department focuses on wage claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cLabor cases only concern wages. Only wages. That\u2019s what they\u2019re zeroing in. Once resolved, they will also go,\u201d said the governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a severe economic challenge ahead of us. That\u2019s why we have to do all these things that are very difficult,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
This came following the arrest of 55 \u201cillegal workers\u201d found working last week in two garment factories: Rifu Apparel Corp. in As Lito and R&B Corp in Chalan Kanoa.<\/p>\n
Agents from the Attorney General’s Investigative Unit, Immigration, and the Department of Public Safety raided both sites and rounded up 54 Chinese nationals and one Korean. Except for two, all are women.<\/p>\n
Following a bail hearing, a $100 cash bail was imposed on each of the 50 respondents and $1,000 cash bail each on five others who were allegedly found to be overstaying tourists. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Fitial administration will deport or repatriate guest workers who hold temporary work authorizations as part of efforts to stop the widespread illegal employment in the CNMI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}