Gloria Cavanagh clearly remembers the early years of this decade. She calls it \u201cThe Dark Ages.\u201d <\/p>\n
That was the time when the CNMI economy was virtually at a standstill\u2014almost no new businesses, almost no new constructions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to revert back to the Dark Ages,\u201d Cavanagh now says.<\/p>\n
She said this in response to news yesterday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services slashed 3,000 slots from the total number of foreign workers the CNMI is allowed to hire in fiscal year 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not want to lose what we now know of the CNMI in the past four years as a growing economy,\u201d she said. That includes people having money in their pockets, more spending power, and a 28.6-percent increase in the CNMI\u2019s gross domestic product in 2016. <\/p>\n
Cavanagh, who chairs the Hotel Association of the Northern Marianas Islands, said the reduction of 3,000 \u201cis a huge number and if there is a shrinkage of the labor force, there\u2019s going to be a shrinkage of the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed out that the CNMI may not need any more workers since businesses will eventually close down.<\/p>\n
USCIS published last night in the Federal Register that the FY 2018 CW-1 numerical cap is 9,998\u20143,000 less than the previous fiscal year\u2019s 12,998.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis huge decrease is an obvious indication that no one is listening and that the federal government doesn\u2019t really understand. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to get this point across and we need to work as a community and help our leaders\u2014the administration and the representative office\u2014and say \u2018we cannot run this way,\u2019\u201d Cavanagh added.<\/p>\n
She said that everyone will feel the domino effect because everything on island is connected. \u201cThis is a scary situation,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a concern islandwide, not just the hotels but we are talking about tour agents, guides, and all the ancillary businesses that support the tourism market. For the HANMI, we have less than 800 CW-1 total but all of the businesses that support our market are in trouble.<\/p>\n
She pointed out that there are areas within Micronesia that are a lot more business-friendly, where businesses can move to. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey can go and do their business remotely because they don\u2019t have employees to rely on here,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Cavanagh insists that CNMI businesses have been doing their part to hire locally, citing the many forays to recruit in Micronesia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. mainland.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo actually say it\u2019s feasible to get somebody from the mainland, uproot their family, and stay here for any amount of time is impossible and to think we can depend on that is unrealistic,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had job fairs and aggressive recruitment. Imperial Pacific International, Ltd. spent millions of dollars to recruit and, within months, they were down to 30 percent and the reality is not all businesses can really afford that,\u201d Cavanagh added.<\/p>\n
According to her, the result of the CW-1 reduction is ultimately going to affect the indigenous people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho carries this burden? The government does and our U.S. representative wholly because that\u2019s what he is here to do. He is supposed to protect us from these disasters and do as much as he can to work with local government and businesses in order to make sure that the CNMI is on the right track.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig and small businesses will definitely be affected but, ultimately, it\u2019s going to come down to the local people. The local people are the ones that are going to suffer because when businesses move off-island or close down, this will displace people,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Cavangah said the urgency to get a bill to address the CNMI\u2019s need for workers passed in Congress is more emphatic now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sense of urgency to pass a bill regarding foreign workforce is stronger now than it was yesterday when we didn\u2019t know what the cap is going to be. I know it is election year next year [but] it is time to set aside agendas as we all need to work together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gloria Cavanagh clearly remembers the early years of this decade. She calls it \u201cThe Dark…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,1238,1566,67],"class_list":["post-264972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-immigration-services","tag-northern-marianas-islands","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264972","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}