The Marianas Visitors Authority has expressed concern about the recent capping of the CW-1 slots that allow businesses in the CNMI to hire foreign workers, a vital aspect for many island businesses. <\/p>\n
MVA managing director Chris Concepcion expressed concern about this recent development since many tourism-based businesses are \u201cvery dependent on foreign workers to sustain the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the cap has been reached in May and [fiscal year] 2018 hasn\u2019t even begun, we are very worried about [the economy],\u201d said Concepcion.<\/p>\n
He remains hopeful that Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP), in tandem with local government heads, would be able to persuade the federal government to \u201ceither lift the cap or give a little more flexibility for the CNMI.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very remote from the U.S. mainland and are very dependent on foreign labor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, it said that zeroing out the CW-1 program in December 2019\u2014as required by law\u2014would negatively impact the CNMI economy. <\/p>\n
Since 2009, the CW-1 program has been used to provide the temporary laborers the CNMI needed. It has already been extended once; its prior deadline for abolition was in 2014.<\/p>\n
Rep. Angel Demapan (R-Saipan), who believes that reaching the cap justifies the GAO report, said that although the CNMI economy is consistently growing, \u201csuch growth cannot be achieved without foreign labor workers to support the limited number of U.S. citizen workers available in the CNMI.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026If our economy can\u2019t grow, essential public services are compromised,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Concepcion echoed a similar comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no other way to go around it. We need to have a way to get easy access to foreign labor to staff our industries because without adequate workforce we can\u2019t move forward,\u201d said Concepcion.<\/p>\n
The CW-1 cap has been breached for the third straight fiscal year, a feat that has alarmed local business owners as well as numerous government agencies. The CW-1 cap for fiscal year 2018 was breached last May 27 after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received a sufficient number of petitions. Although USCIS has yet to release a specific numerical limit for fiscal year 2018, it is a statutory requirement that every fiscal year the numerical limit of the CW-1 cap goes down. Fiscal year 2017\u2019s cap was set at 12,998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Marianas Visitors Authority has expressed concern about the recent capping of the CW-1 slots…<\/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":[2714,26,11016,7100],"class_list":["post-253351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-chris-concepcion","tag-cnmi","tag-gao","tag-government-accountability-office"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253351","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=253351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}