Faced with the daunting task of shortening the long immigration wait lines at the Saipan airport, the Commonwealth Ports Authority plans to send a resolution to Customs and Border Protection to formally request it to hire more people.<\/p>\n
CPA board member and airport committee chair Barrie Toves told Saipan Tribune yesterday that since the screening of tourists lies in the hands of CBP, it makes sense to appeal to them to increase the number of screeners at the Francisco C. Ada Saipan International Airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that the processing of the passengers is in their control, but there seems to be a problem with the delays, so we are requesting formally through the resolution that they increase [their] manpower,\u201d said Toves.<\/p>\n
CBP director Robert Humphrey is expected to visit Saipan in mid-April. CPA is looking to take advantage of his presence by giving him their resolution to pass to CBP higher-ups. <\/p>\n
Rep. Don Barcinas (R-Saipan) and Rep. Lorenzo Deleon Guerrero (Ind-Saipan) attended yesterday\u2019s CPA board meeting. Barcinas, who chairs the House\u2019s Transportation Committee, supported the resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want [CPA] to know that the Transportation Committee members stand ready to work with the CPA management team and the CPA board of directors,\u201d said Barcinas. \u201cWe are committed to improving the wellbeing of the people of the CNMI by focusing our priorities on all the transportation needs of the people who live and visit our islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres earlier directed CPA to look into ongoing tourism issues that could jeopardize the CNMI\u2019s parole authority. It is that authority which allows the entry of Chinese and Russian tourists to the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Chinese tourists make up 40 percent of total visitors in fiscal years 2016, according to the Marianas Visitors Authority.<\/p>\n
According to Torres\u2019 letter to CPA, if the CNMI loses its parole authority, \u201c[we will] revert to severe economic depression [the CNMI] experienced only a few short years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Faced with the daunting task of shortening the long immigration wait lines at the Saipan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[2130,26,124,67],"class_list":["post-248763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cbp","tag-cnmi","tag-cpa","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248763","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}