Based on a recent Office of Insular Affairs report, it was determined that less than 3,000 CNMI-Only Transitional workers qualify as \u201clegacy\u201d or \u201clong-term\u201d workers and will be exempt from the newly implemented touchback provision of the law that would require them to leave the CNMI and \u201ctouch back\u201d their country of origin.<\/p>\n
According to Alex Sablan of the Northern Marianas Business Alliance Corp., the OIA report states that less than 3,000 individuals qualify as a \u201clegacy\u201d or \u201clong-term\u201d visa holder in the Commonwealth. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone but under 3,000, everybody but the long-term, needs to touch back. We always assumed it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 or even 9,000 because of the number we had out here but some people had to leave and that break caused them not to be a continuous employee,\u201d he said in an interview with Saipan Tribune. <\/p>\n
Sablan explained that, as per the definition of the U.S. Congress, what defines as a \u201clegacy\u201d worker is a CW worker from 2015 to 2018 who has been continuously employed in the CNMI, with no shift in employment to a different employer, and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s affecting anybody who was under that definition, as defined within the public law, and it is a good number of our CWs today. If you look at the intention of the law, this is exactly what Congress wanted. \u2026The H2-B program is somewhat like that\u2014a three-year break\u2014three years then you cannot be renewed into the United States as an H2. I think that\u2019s what they want to do with the CW,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
When asked about how this touchback provision would impact the CNMI, Sablan said due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the CNMI wouldn\u2019t be as devastated. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf this were any other time, if we were on full board economy going, this would be troublesome, we would be devastated. With COVID-19, with the fact that we have an economy that is dwindling, and a lot of U.S. citizens unemployed today, it makes it very hard to justify CWs in this timeline. \u2026Right now, it\u2019s a blessing in disguise that we have COVID-19; this would be the silver lining,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
At the end of the day, Sablan said, it\u2019s still going to be troublesome to lose a large chunk of the CNMI workforce due to this new provision. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s troublesome that we\u2019re going to lose a big portion of our CW workforce for the period of time it takes to actually renew these individuals. We\u2019ll see how this plays out. At the end of the day, we don\u2019t know when the economy is going to start up again,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Based on a recent Office of Insular Affairs report, it was determined that less than…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":324366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327172","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}