Senate President Pete P. Reyes has expressed full support for the CNMI\u2019s continued access to the emerging Chinese and Russian visitor markets.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Saipan Tribune on Friday, Reyes said he is 100 percent in favor of House Speaker Arnold I. Palacios\u2019 intention to come up with a joint House-Senate resolution regarding the visa waiver issue for the Chinese and Russian tourists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why part of the discussions that we had when Speaker Palacios and I went to Washington D.C. was to request if the CNMI government can be allowed to participate in the crafting of the regulation on the federal immigration law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The whole idea, the Senate president said, was to see how the CNMI would benefit from this visa waiver program.<\/p>\n
He said one way is by recommending an exemption because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is supposed to be taking a lead role in the implementation and enforcement of federalization of CNMI\u2019s immigration. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut they also have the authority to make appropriate changes whenever that is desirable to do so,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Reyes said the continued access to Chinese and Russian visitor markets is very important for the CNMI to make up for the loss in the Japanese tourists.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to make up for these losses, we need to begin looking at other parts of the world that we can convince that the CNMI is a good point of destination for tourism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Palacios earlier told Saipan Tribune that he had instructed Rep. Diego T. Benavente to look into the visa waiver issue and possibly come up with a joint resolution with the Senate, urging the Department of Homeland Security to consider the CNMI\u2019s request for visa waiver for emerging tourism markets.<\/p>\n
Palacios had said that after reading a recent joint report of the Marianas Integrated Immigration Task Force regarding the implementation of the CNMI-Guam visa waiver program, be believes the Legislature must come up with a unified position on the issue.<\/p>\n
According to the Task Force\u2019s joint report, the loss of the Chinese and Russia markets would have a significant adverse impact on the CNMI\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
The report says that from 2008 to 2010, these two markets alone are projected to contribute a total of $1.01 billion in tourist spending, government revenues, and peripheral economic activities.<\/p>\n
The CNMI began welcoming Chinese tourists in 1998, while it started catering to Russian tourists in 1996, both under the Commonwealth\u2019s Visitor Entry Permit process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senate President Pete P. Reyes has expressed full support for the CNMI\u2019s continued access to the emerging Chinese and Russian visitor markets.<\/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-125794","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\/125794","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=125794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}