{"id":229556,"date":"2016-06-08T06:06:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T20:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=229556"},"modified":"2016-06-08T06:06:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T20:06:47","slug":"chamber-holds-forum-contract-worker-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/chamber-holds-forum-contract-worker-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Chamber holds forum on contract worker issue"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"From<\/a>
From left, Attorney Nelson Xu, IT&E human resources manager Shirley Dotts, and attorney Bruce Mailman led a panel of immigration and labor issues held by the Saipan Chamber of Commerce at the Pacific Islands Club yesterday. (Dennis B. Chan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce presented a panel of experts at a symposium yesterday for workers and employers affected by the federal government\u2019s cap on contract workers allowed in the CNMI this fiscal year.<\/p>\n

A panel of experts\u2014attorneys Nelson Xu and Bruce Mailman and IT&E human resource manager Shirley Dotts\u2014spoke on visa programs, conversion options, and common misconceptions in the permitting process to a crowd at the Pacific Islands Club\u2019s Charley Cabaret yesterday.<\/p>\n

The breached cap and the 10-day window provided by the federal government for workers affected and their families to leave after their permits expire is a continuing concern, and is expected to force over a thousand workers, not including their families, to leave the Commonwealth as early as May until October.<\/p>\n

Mami Ikeda, a contract worker who finds her profession in helping process permits for different clients, has her permit expire in September. She said she was about to prepare to submit her petition but was cutoff by the announced May deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I am trying to see if anything will change for the people who missed the cap,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ikeda came back to Saipan in 2009, but her whole family has been on island since she was in the fourth grade, in the late 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents had business here. My brothers stayed here for 40 years. They now are all passed. When I came back in 2009, contract worker was the only way I can stay here so I had no chance. They passed away. They were CNMI permanent residents,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ikeda has also started a page on Facebook called \u201cFaces of CW\u201d to share the group of affected workers\u2019 concerns.<\/p>\n

Asked how she felt knowing she had to leave in September, she said, \u201cI can\u2019t. I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad and brother are both buried in Tanapag and I have a business here and I have a cat to look after. I don\u2019t have my own family but I just cannot leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another affected person, employer Sylvan Tudela of Chelu Photos, runs a three-man photography and video business that depends on the skills of small staff he has. One of his employees\u2019 permit expires in September, meaning that he will have to send this employee back to his home country and hope a permit can be approved in time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy company is a three-person company. It\u2019s a very small business. I\u2019m a local business owner and work by myself in this industry. I need people to work with me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to find people with the talent like what I have with my employees right now. Not just the talent, but the know-how, the experience\u2026It\u2019s very daunting for me because I could lose a lot of clients just for that one person.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur jobs are based on recording people\u2019s live, recording people\u2019s most important events,\u201d Tudela said. Chelu Photos does photography and video for weddings and other events. \u201cIt will be really hard for me to do what I am offering now if I lost that one person. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019d do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tudela said the symposium yesterday was enlightening. He said the avenues presented as options, though, like other visa class options, we\u2019re not easy tasks and appear more expensive. It\u2019s also a lot more paperwork, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s not going to be any easier for a small business person like myself to try and survive something like this,\u201d he said. \u201cI am not giving up hope but it just makes it harder for me to do my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

The symposium had attorney Nelson Xu speak on various types of visa program, attorney Bruch Mailman speak on strategies for securing and maintaining labor force, and Shirley Dotts, human resource manager at IT&E, speak on common misconceptions and mistakes from the employers perspective.<\/p>\n

Xu says that he and Mailman both are in the opinion that parole\u2014for employees with visas expiring before Oct. 1\u2014\u201cis not going to work,\u201d for companies that might try this route.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not an option because for parole in place to work\u2014according to U.S. immigration, people we talk to\u2014the person must not be granted any U.S. visas. So if the person has a CW visa, now expired, they are not eligible for parole. So that\u2019s out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xu believes there are very limited options for the affected to continue working on island without first leaving.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur recommendation is to always not leave any room for misinterpretation, so that there visa status would not be jeopardized,\u201d Xu said, who works at Bauman, Kondas, and Xu, LLC based out of Guam.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur firm would recommend that people leave and then come back and then apply for the new CW visas with the starting date of Oct. 1 and then come back so you don\u2019t leave any misinterpretation\u201d and \u201cconfusion to [U.S.] immigration and give them a reason to deny the CW\u201d visa.<\/p>\n

He understands that many don\u2019t want to leave but thinks it might be the better option.<\/p>\n

Xu says there are rules they are still trying to clarify as to whether employees or employers can use that 10-day window to leave after expiration as a \u201cbridge\u201d between the expiration date and the start date of the next visa, but says that is still not clear. \u201cAnd when it\u2019s not very clear, I\u2019d like to play it safe. I think I would recommend them to leave and apply now\u201d and \u201ctry to get the new one [permit] as soon as possible\u201d before cap space is used up for next fiscal year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen you are out for even a longer period of time,\u201d he added. \u201cThat is kind of a risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

On transitioning to other visa categories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Xu said the No. 1 thing for those with expiring visas to do is to look at themselves and see if there is any possibility of converting to a different visa without leaving.<\/p>\n

This could be to an H-visa, or any other visa, he said. And it\u2019s very important to look at family based petitions, he added, whether they are family, relatives, immediate family U.S. citizens, to apply for in the future or very soon, before they choose to leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these options have to be exhausted. They probably need some professional help. It\u2019s very complicated. We need to look at every option. Then if there is no other way to go then they have to leave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce presented a panel of experts at a symposium yesterday for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":229565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[56,118,67,11842],"class_list":["post-229556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-business-3","tag-cw","tag-people","tag-shirley-dotts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229556","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}