Northern Marianas is 9,000 miles and 14 time zones away from Washington D.C., but just three-hour flight from Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Manila, making the island’s economy closely tied with Asian economies.<\/p>\n
Estimated business gross revenues – $2.6 billion in 1997<\/p>\n
Locally-generated revenues – $248 million in 1997 to $216 million in 1999<\/p>\n
Revenue collections from tourism and other non-apparel activities – $132 million in 1999 down by 30 percent from $186 million in 1997<\/p>\n
Revenue collections from apparel – $85 million in 1999 up by 37 percent from $63 million<\/p>\n
Annual federal grants – $30 million, including $11 million in capital improvement projects while Guam receives $133 million per year<\/p>\n
Annual federal spending – $45 million while Guam has a total $800 million per year<\/p>\n
Tourist arrivals – 485,000 in 1999, down eight percent from 526,298 in 1998 and 726,690 in 1997<\/p>\n
Number of permanent residents employed in the garment – 4,300 in 1998 or one-third of the local workforce<\/p>\n
Entry permits issued to alien workers – 34,111 in 1997 down 26 percent to 25,306 issued between August 1, 1998 to July 31, 1999<\/p>\n
Unemployment rate of U.S. citizens – 13.4 percent or approximately 1,400 people, compared to Guam with 12.9 percent<\/p>\n
Repatriated alien workers since February 1999 under PL 11-66 – 163 costing $359,000 in government monetary assistance<\/p>\n
Illegal aliens registered under the limited immunity program – 3,111 lower by nearly 50 percent from the 7,000 estimated by the federal government<\/p>\n
Percentage of increase the inspections conducted by DOLI from 1998 to this year – 41.6 percent for business establishments, 12 percent for garment factories, 75 percent for garment housing<\/p>\n
Immigration criminal prosecutions – up 100 percent from 1997; in 1998, there were 25 labor and immigration criminal cases filed against 45 defendants<\/p>\n
Collected assets from forfeiture actions against violators of immigration laws – $500,000 estimate<\/p>\n
Deportation orders – 441 in 1998 up by 78 percent from 247 in 1997 and 211 this year (fewer due to amnesty program on illegals)<\/p>\n
Voluntary departures of illegal aliens – 798 in 1998<\/p>\n
Labor complaints filed with DOLI – 143 in 1999, down by 85 percent from 930 in 1998 and 1,279 in 1997<\/p>\n
Collected from companies with order to pay backwages – $1.14 million since January 1998 and $400,000 in 1997<\/p>\n
Source: Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio’s testimony before the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northern Marianas is 9,000 miles and 14 time zones away from Washington D.C., but just three-hour flight from Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Manila, making the island’s economy closely tied with Asian economies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48068","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\/48068","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=48068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}