The CNMI Department of Labor has confirmed that CNMI Long-Term Resident applicants who have recently received their Employment Authorization Documents are no longer eligible to receive pandemic unemployment assistance. <\/p>\n
In an interview with CNMI Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente, she said that even if an individual whose CNMI Only Transitional Worker visa\u2014or CW-1 visa\u2014remains active but has recently received an EAD from their Long-Term Resident application, they will no longer be qualified for unemployment assistance under the PUA program starting from the day their EAD was approved. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to go with the most recent status. We can\u2019t have two statuses. We will go by whatever their current active employment status is,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Benavente said even if a PUA claimant submits their CW-1 visa and chooses to withhold their recently acquired EAD, it is part of the adjudication process to verify an individual\u2019s immigration status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe verify the PUA claimant\u2019s most recent status with federal sites, whatever it is, and that\u2019s what we go by. Before, the same process took us three to five days, now because they\u2019re so overwhelmed, it\u2019s taking a week to two weeks to get it verified,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Benavente said it is unfortunate situation for those who are affected and the CNMI administration has tried reaching out to the U.S. Department of Labor to ask it for consideration, to no avail.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, this is something that we have asked, the governor has asked, we have asked for reconsideration for our EAD workers. And when we sent that request, I believe a couple of months ago, we did not receive an official response,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Although the department wants to help everyone who is suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, Benavente said they still need to follow strict mandates so as not to jeopardize other federal funding that the CNMI receives. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always tried to help all claimants but we still have to follow every mandate from the USDOL. It is difficult because we want to help everyone who\u2019s in a situation of unemployment, unemployed or reduce hours. Unfortunately, the law says, in particular, CW-1 qualifies but not EADs,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI Department of Labor has confirmed that CNMI Long-Term Resident applicants who have recently…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":352141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352138","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\/352138","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=352138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}