U.S. Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan has expressed support for the CNMI Economic Vitality and Security Travel Authorization Program or EVS-TAP, which would impose restrictions on Chinese tourists who visit the island without B-2 visas.
“I write to support the proposed rule [to implement the EVS-TAP] in concept and to urge your Department to complete work quickly to allow publication for full consideration,” Congressman Kilili said in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas dated Dec. 15, 2023.
Prior to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Chinese tourists comprised 44% of all arrivals in the CNMI. They were allowed to visit without a B-2 visa, also known as a tourist visa, because of the “discretionary parole” authority of the secretary of Homeland Security.
Kilili said in 2009, then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano utilized her “Secretarial authority of humanitarian parole” to “maximize the Commonwealth’s potential for future economic and business growth.”
“The economy of the Marianas increasingly benefited from Chinese tourists paroled in on a case-by-case basis,” Kilili said.
But in Nov. 2023, a group of U.S. senators and representatives urged Mayorkas to mandate B-1 or B-2 visas for Chinese nationals, who want to visit the CNMI.
They said discretionary parole “made the islands vulnerable to a plethora of problems including drug trafficking, illegal immigration, and organized crime.”
Marianas Visitors Authority Managing Director Chris Concepcion, for his part, said the end of discretionary parole would “kill” the Chinese tourism market.
Kilili noted that it was in 2019 when the representatives of the Trump White House and the Torres administration recommended the creation of EVS-TAP.
“President Trump’s and Governor Torres’ Special Representatives… recognized a statutorily authorized alternative that could both address the vulnerabilities of the parole system and maintain the economic benefits to the Marianas of tourism from China, namely the Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver Program,” Kilili said in his letter to Mayorkas.
“Tourism to the Marianas is still emerging from the pandemic quarantine period, but in the long run our islands must reestablish what has traditionally been the mainstay of our economy,” Kilili added.
The EVS-TAP is a “restricted travel authorization program…that would allow travelers from China, but only if subject to electronic screening and vetting prior to entry,” Kilili said.
“Additionally,…the U.S. would consider bonding requirements…which the Commonwealth itself instituted when it first entered into an approved destination status agreement with the People’s Republic of China in 2004. The abstract of the proposed rule to establish a CNMI EVS-TAP references these recommendations as its basis,” Kilili added.
Also expressing support for the implementation of the EVS-TAP are the Saipan Chamber of Commerce, the Hotel Association of the NMI, and the CNMI Senate.
In an Oct. 20, 2023, letter to Gov. Arnold I. Palacios, Kilili and the presiding officers of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the chamber and HANMI said the EVS-TAP “would aid in increasing the level of passenger screening that is possible and ensure that only direct flights from China are authorized under the [program]. This would create firm safeguards against overstaying visitors or any potential future rise in birth tourism, as existing flights would be operated and controlled by travel groups that could be held accountable for their passengers.”
