The recent announcement of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reaching its 2016 fiscal year cap for the CNMI-only transitional worker program and its rule to send home those who have rejected extension petitions and their families have sent shockwaves across the CNMI, especially for stakeholders and CW status holders. <\/p>\n
The Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands said they were \u201cextremely shocked\u201d when the news came out. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs an association that represents the driving force of our economy, we plead with our U.S. congressman and our administration to negotiate a solution for this immediate crisis. Although we support growth, that is, controlled growth, in the CNMI, we cannot close the doors of the existing businesses,\u201d HANMI\u2019s official statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently surveying the immediate effect this crisis will have on our members,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
According to HANMI chair Gloria Cavanagh, it is \u201cvery possible\u201d that the CNMI will once again experience closures or limited hours of businesses due to worker shortage, similar to what the Commonwealth experienced earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have just spoken to a large tour company and they had expressed the possibility of closure by this summer,\u201d Cavanagh said.<\/p>\n
HANMI said that \u201cfor every one employee in our industry, it affects 1.72 employees of supporting businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Velma Palacios said that the situation is \u201cvery concerning\u201d and like HANMI, they will also be conducting surveys on how many of employees of their members could possibly be affected. <\/p>\n
Palacios added that they also coursed questions from their members regarding the situation through the Office of the Governor. Among those that they want to clarify is the 10-day limit for workers with rejected extension petitions to stay on the island as well as how the 240-day grace period will affect those with rejected petitions. <\/p>\n
\u2018Heartless and ruthless\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Human resource professional Frank Gibson, who wrote his concerns to Delegate Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (Ind-MP), said he was shocked, not at the news that the cap was reached \u201cbut by the denial of extensions of existing CW-1s.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUSCIS issued too many new visas if their numbers don\u2019t allow the extensions of existing employees.\u00a0This means that every CW-1 that will expire before 1 October and was not received by 5 May will be required to go home\u2014no matter the job, the length or residence in the CNMI, the length of service to the employer, the presence of U.S. children, or whether the position can be filled locally\u2014regardless of the impact on the individual, their family or the employing business,\u201d Gibson said in his letter to Sablan.<\/p>\n According to Gibson, he knows of one business that will have to send home seven nurses, three physical therapy technicians, and a physical therapist that are \u201cneeded\u201d in the community.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is unacceptable.\u00a0USCIS should never have accepted new visa petitions that would prevent the extension\/renewal of current visa holders.\u00a0This means that the 500 CW-1 visas for Best Sunshine and the 500 CW-1 visas for Honest Profit construction workers are going to replace long-term workers for other companies,\u201d Gibson stated.<\/p>\n Gibson said the current situation shows that the worker crisis starts now, \u201cnot in 2019.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf existing visa holders are now exceeding the cap, it means USCIS approved too many new visas, resulting in this \u2018heartless and ruthless\u2019 adverse action.\u00a0Why was there no protective measure for existing approved visa holders?\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n \u201cIt also means that, since the cap has been reached, every new petition accepted for an employment start date after 1 October 2017 will result in a current employee with visa renewal date later in the year being denied an extension,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Gibson said that the current situation is \u201cextremely unfair to employers who have done their job in timely extension processing so they can continue their necessary workers.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf there has to be a denial, it should have been to the employer whose request for new workers put us over the limit. USCIS has records that show numbers of existing CW-1 workers.\u00a0Their continuation should have had priority,\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n Gibson said there is a need to change the existing law regarding the CW program.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the continuation of a failed law and regulation.\u00a0Even though it is obvious that the decrease of alien workers will be disastrous to our community and our economy, we\u203are forced to continue down that path because it\u2019s the law. Someone has to acknowledge this and bring this failed plan to a close before the CNMI economy collapses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Gibson is also an officer of the Society of Human Resources Management-NMI Chapter, which will be having a membership meeting this Thursday at the Pacific Islands Club Saipan to discuss CW issues. \u00a0<\/p>\n Remedy <\/strong><\/p>\n CNMI Department of Labor Secretary Edith DeLeon Guerrero said she is hopeful that a remedy will be given to those who were caught in the cap.<\/p>\n \u201cI am hopeful that some remedy unique to our needs especially for on-going businesses with start work dates within FY 16 time period\u00a0that may be caught in the cap and have gone through the rigor of labor market testing\u00a0is considered knowing that FY 16 is still four months away from expiring,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe economic effects of a four-month gap are something to be concerned about and any\u00a0remedy is what we can be hopeful for,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent announcement of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reaching its 2016 fiscal year…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,118,301,119],"class_list":["post-228412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-cw","tag-hanmi","tag-uscis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228412","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}