{"id":393354,"date":"2023-06-08T06:03:37","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T20:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=393354"},"modified":"2023-06-08T06:03:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T20:03:37","slug":"chamber-supports-including-ph-in-guam-cnmi-visa-waiver-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/chamber-supports-including-ph-in-guam-cnmi-visa-waiver-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Chamber supports including PH in Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Saipan Chamber of Commerce Tourism and Commerce Committee chair Alex Sablan delivers his committee report during yesterday\u2019s General Membership Meeting at the Kensington Hotel Saipan. (MARK RABAGO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce supports including the Philippines on the list of countries that are being proposed for the Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an ongoing effort by Guam and the CNMI to look at the idea of adding to our CNMI-Guam Visa Waiver Program the country of the Philippines. It makes a lot of sense, I guess, for all of us. Guam has a large Filipino population and we have a large Filipino population. I think, you know, the issue of going from point A to point B and back\u2014from a tourism standpoint, from an employer standpoint, from an employee\u2019s [standpoint], from a medical standpoint\u2014it makes all the sense in the world. \u2026So we\u2019d like to jump onboard with Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero, who\u2019s advocating for this,\u201d said Chamber board of director Alex Sablan, who chairs the business group\u2019s Tourism and Commerce Committee during yesterday\u2019s General Membership Meeting at the Kensington Hotel Saipan.<\/p>\n

He said the Chamber already had discussions with Guam Sen. William Parkinson, who introduced Senate Resolution 14-37 that \u201curges Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero to petition the Department of Homeland Security to add Filipinos within the list of Guam-only visa-free travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to continue the conversation with our governor and our leaders and so that\u2019s something we\u2019d like to bring to [Washington,] D.C. as a conversation piece. And again, we\u2019re hopeful that we can continue to collaborate with the administration and collaborate with [Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan],\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Postponed DC trip<\/strong><\/p>\n

As for the planned trip to Washington, D.C., Alex Sablan said the Chamber had to postpone it to late June or early July due to Typhoon Mawar.<\/p>\n

He reiterated the need to rally support to delay by three years the \u201ctouchback provision\u201d of the Northern Marianas Islands U.S. Workforce Act (Public Law 115-218).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough to have a conversation about lobbying or the idea of continuing CW workforce efforts whenever we have a lot of unemployed individuals in the Commonwealth, but the numbers don\u2019t lie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At the height of the local economy, the CNMI had 27,000 workers, with 16,000 U.S. citizens-eligible workers, Alex Sablan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to see the numbers go up. We need a strong CW-1 workforce, along with a strong U.S. citizen workforce. \u2026 Quite frankly, that balance has been somewhere in the neighborhood of mid-50% for U.S. citizen workforce and mid-40% for CW, so that strikes the balance in the Commonwealth. Whether we\u2019ll see 27,000 workers in the Commonwealth going forward remains to be seen,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

Alex Sablan also said the delay in the touchback provision is not an immigration issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re advocating more for commerce. We\u2019re really not focused on the immigration aspect of this. This is about the survival of our economy. I know it is a tough juggling act for many of us in this sector\u2026,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While understanding the Department of Labor\u2019s effort to prioritize U.S. citizens in the workforce, he said there\u2019s also a need to focus on the numbers game in the sense that the CNMI will have a total workforce, which includes a healthy balance of CW-1 workers, especially as it pertains to the construction industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pushing the effort to communicate with our delegate\u2026Kilili. We have a meeting sometime this week. We\u2019re hoping that the [Chamber] board of directors [is] able to vocalize our issues related to the workforce. We have nearly $2 billion in development coming so we need 3,000 construction workers as a prime example. An H-2B is not the answer for our construction efforts in this region,\u201d said Alex Sablan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce supports including the Philippines on the list of countries that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":393356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[664],"class_list":["post-393354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-ph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393354","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}