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<\/p>\nGov. Arnold I. Palacios is unsure if the promulgation of a new visa type is going to change anything with respect to Chinese tourists coming to the CNMI, but he acknowledged it is something that they need to look into.<\/p>\n
Palacios said in an interview last week that he has learned about Sen. Jude U. Hofschneider\u2019s (R-Tinian) joint resolution that asks him to advocate for the increased security for the tourism industry, through the promulgation of what\u2019s called the CNMI Economic Vitality & Security Travel Authorization Program.<\/p>\n
Once that resolution goes through the legislative process, that\u2019s when the Palacios-Apatang administration will look into it, he said.<\/p>\n
He said if the resolution passes the Senate, it will go to the House of Representatives, so they will study it in the coming days and see if there is a need to possibly advocate for that program.<\/p>\n
EVS-TAP was one of the recommendations of 902 Consultation special representatives in their report dated May 15, 2019, to then-president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
As envisioned by the 902 panels, the CNMI EVS-TAP would be a subprogram of the Guam-CNMI Visa Program that balances visitor ease with enhanced security provisions and transparency.<\/p>\n
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the CNMI EVS-TAP will allow prescreened nationals of the People\u2019s Republic of China to travel to the CNMI without a visa under specifc conditions.<\/p>\n
Hofschneider\u2019s Senate Joint Resolution 23-07 asks Palacios to request for the publication of the interim rule creating the CNMI-EVS-TAP by DHS.<\/p>\n
Palacios said the U.S. House of Representatives is predominantly Republican right now, and this is a Republican House that\u2019s calling to take away the visa waiver for Chinese tourists entering the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I don’t know how successful we\u2019re [going to] be with them. But it’s something that we need to probably formally consider,\u201d Palacios said.<\/p>\n
Four U.S. senators and 28 U.S. House members signed a letter dated Nov. 30, 2023, requesting DHS to revoke the discretionary parole program that allows it to let Chinese tourists enter the CNMI without a tourist visa.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gov. Arnold I. Palacios<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Arnold I. Palacios is unsure if the promulgation of a new visa type is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403374","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}