Interior, which is mandated by the federalization law to make recommendations to Congress on the status of long-term guest workers in the CNMI, said it was its Federal Labor Ombudsman’s Office that gathered labor-related data for its report.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security hasn’t done any registration of aliens due to operational and budget constraint.
The CNMI government, on the other hand, did not share its labor data with the federal government.
“The CNMI has not compiled current data on the various segments of the labor force such as employed, unemployed and looking for work, discouraged workers and others such as part-time and self-employed workers.
The CNMI is the only U.S. labor market where more than half of payroll workers are temporary alien workers who are present in the CNMI on permits issued by the CNMI,” Interior said in its 20-page report submitted to Congress.
“Its labor force data consist of two main components: 1) work permits for those entering the CNMI as temporary alien workers and, 2) payroll tax withholding (W-2 Form) data that the CNMI collects by industry and by worker nationality,” it added.
The report said alien workers are issued their CNMI work permits before coming to the islands but it doesn’t mean the holders are already physically present here.
Based on the report, there were 20,859 documented aliens in the CNMI as of Dec. 2009. Of these, 16,304 were workers.
Ninety-seven percent of these workers would qualify for the grant of improved immigration status that Interior recommended to Congress.
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