The Philippine honorary consul to the CNMI said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services\u2019 decision to remove the Philippines from H-2B and H-2A visa program was a decision for Washington, D.C. to carry out and nobody else.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is their prerogative,\u201d Philippine honorary consul to the CNMI Glicerio Arago noted in an interview last Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune solicited his comments after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a Jan. 19, 2019 post in the Federal Register noted that the Philippines, Ethiopia, and the Dominican Republic are among the list of countries banned from applying for H-2A or H-2B visas. <\/p>\n
The notice cited high overstay rates for H-2B visa holders from the Philippines and the Dominican Republic, while Ethiopia was removed from the eligible list due to its designation of \u201cat risk of non-compliance\u201d since 2016. It further noted that the U.S. Embassy in Manila issues the largest number of T-visas\u2014visas usually afforded to severe human trafficking \u2013among all U.S. posts around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cU.S. Embassy Manila issued approximately 40 percent of the total T-derivative visas issued worldwide from fiscal year 2014 [through] fiscal year 2016,\u201d the notice wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Philippines\u2019 continued inclusion [to the program] creates the potential for abuse, fraud, and other harm to the integrity of the H-2A or H-2B visa programs,\u201d it continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is important now is for the Philippine government to properly represent itself and deal with Washington, D.C. [regarding] this problem,\u201d Arago said. \u201cThis [visa] is very critical, especially for Filipino construction workers,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
The Pacific Daily News noted there are about 1,300 freshly approved H-2B visas for Guam, 606 of which were on island as of Tuesday, the media outlet noted quoting the Guam Department of Labor.<\/p>\n
Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC in late March 2018 reported that they have procured 1,542 H-2B visa holders from Taiwan and Philippines. The company did not specify what percentage of the 1,542 H-2B visa holders were from the Philippines.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune reached out to a representative of the Philippine Consulate in Guam for comment, but it did not immediately issue a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Philippine honorary consul to the CNMI said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services\u2019 decision…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[664],"class_list":["post-292426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292426","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=292426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}