The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution that \u201csupports the move to respectfully request a five-year extension of the transitional period of the CNMI-Only Investor (E-2C) visa program beyond Dec. 31, 2014, with ample time for transition.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Resolution 18-66 is authored by Rep. Anthony Sablan (Ind-Saipan) but was adopted by the committee of the whole during last week\u2019s House session.<\/p>\n
According to HR 18-66, an \u201cadditional transition period of five years is absolutely necessary to prevent a collapse of the CNMI economy,\u201d quoting the Saipan Chamber of Commerce.<\/p>\n
It also said the extension of the E-2C visa would come in handy as the Commonwealth\u2019s tourism arrivals have increased and hotel occupancy rates reached 91 percent as of January 2013, the highest since 1997.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government and private sector considers that losing foreign, long-term investors will hamper the rise of our tourism-based economy in a major way; and a grant of a five-year extension would not subvert the goal of U.S. Public Law 110-229,\u201d added the resolution.<\/p>\n
U.S. PL 110-229 is the Consolidated Natural Resources Act that gave a five-year transition period not only for long-term foreign investors in the CNMI but long-term nonresident workers as well via the CNMI workers program or CW program.<\/p>\n
Sablan said extending the E-2C program is of the utmost importance because the CNMI currently has more than 260 such investors, which are the backbone of the islands\u2019 economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody would deny that failure to extend that E-2C investor visa would have an economic impact on our economy. I always believed that the backbone of our economy is the small- and medium-sized businesses. These are the people who put money in their operations and hire. They do their part in paying taxes and they have a positive impact on the economy. They were told that by the end of the year they could no longer remain here. I don\u2019t want to imagine the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former Division of Immigration director said it would only be right for Congress to extend the E-2C program like what the Department of Homeland Security did in extending the CW program.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically we have a situation where we have uncertainty with regards to people doing business. The U.S. government already did the right action by extending the CW transition period. I think we need to do the same for those operating businesses here. I can\u2019t imagine the economic impact. Roughly we\u2019re looking at around 200-some. The intent here is to address and take care of a visa status situation here so they could stay here and operate a business legally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sablan said copies of HR 18-66 would be given to U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Gov. Eloy S. Inos, Senate President Ralph DLG. Torres (R-Saipan), and Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP).<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re going to do is make a personal request to the Speaker [Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero] to prepare certified copies of the resolution so we can make them available directly to the office of Kilili and the other individuals on the list, including Congress. We want this out by tomorrow because we really don\u2019t have much time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sablan is happy that all his colleagues in the House adopted the resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad that the members want to introduce that as a committee of the whole so it has the backing of everybody in trying to convey the urgency of the matter. We\u2019re barely a month away from the end of the year so I think it\u2019s important that we take this step and other steps to take this particular issue to the attention of the federal authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution that \u201csupports the move to respectfully…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,118,1341,67],"class_list":["post-186335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-cw","tag-house-resolution","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186335","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}