U.S. Congresswoman Kimberlyn King-Hinds is working on several pieces of legislation aimed at restoring economic stability and hope in the CNMI.
In a WhatsApp interview over the weekend, she said her “most challenging priority has to be the extension of the CNMI’s transition period,” referring to the CNMI-Only Transitional Workers Visa program, which will expire on Dec. 31, 2029.
The program was previously extended for five years by the Obama administration in June 2014, and for 10 years by bipartisan legislation signed by President Donald Trump in June 2018.
The CW program allows the CNMI to hire foreign workers who are otherwise ineligible for other employment-based nonimmigrant visas under U.S. law.
Foreign workers can also be hired in the CNMI under the H-1B or H-2B visas.
King-Hinds said the CNMI must have continued “access to the workers it needs to operate an economy that can sustain 50,000 people….”
The CW program will end in four short years, she added. “Four years. A freshman in a Northern Marianas College bachelors program today will be graduating to an economy that has widespread business closures, limited job opportunities, and no prospects for recovery,” she said.
King-Hinds said businesses today cannot plan beyond the next few years, and they have no credible way to gain assurance that they will have the workers they need to continue operations.
“That is no way to run an economy. Time and time again the research has shown us that there is not enough U.S. citizen workers to operate the economy,” she added.
As businesses close, “even more of our people will leave,” she said.
She noted that in the last 10 years the CNMI lost 12% of its population. “What will it look like in the next Census if we do nothing today? So we have to have a community conversation about our next chapter for our transition period, and what we need to do now to keep our community afloat, but this conversation must include increasing resources available to local federal officials to enforce the laws that are created,” she said.
“I said there are not enough U.S. citizens in the CNMI to operate our economy, and that is a fact, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do more to better skill and train those that are here today to be greater contributors in the labor force,” she added.
King-Hinds said she is working on legislation “that would secure full access for the CNMI to the Wagner-Peyser Act (as the previous delegate has worked on) and the workforce development programs and resources available to every state and territory in the nation except the CNMI and American Samoa.”
Over the last 17 years since the federalization of immigration, King-Hinds said “we have been expected to do more than any other community in the country with less resources to accomplish it. It is unfair and shows a disregard for the CNMI and the realities we face.”
She is also working on “gaining inclusion and increasing job training resources and data that can build the CNMI local workforce, increase their potential income in the market, and have them be in the lead of the economic recovery we wish to see.”
In addition, she is working on a bill that would decrease the financial strain placed on the CNMI government and organizations like Northern Marianas College that are operating federally funded infrastructure projects by removing “the strenuous requirements to float construction expenses in anticipation of federal reimbursements.”
Moreover, “we are [taking] steps to take on the elimination of the unfair Medicaid caps that prevent innovation and increased benefits for residents who rely on the service for access to healthcare. And we are researching avenues through the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on ways federal policy can reduce the exorbitant prices individuals are paying for groceries and the goods they see at the stores.”
She said there are a number of areas where the federal government can do more to improve the lives of people living in the CNMI that do not require an act of Congress.
These include resuming compliance with Annex VI, which will again allow direct flights from mainland China, expanding lending options for small businesses, and reducing processing times for federal regulations.
“These can and should be done and it’s [by] working with federal agencies that we can make headway in accomplishing them,” King-Hinds said.
