IT IS OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE IN THE COMMONWEALTH THAT MOST NMI EMPLOYERS AREN’T GIVING PREFERENTIAL HIRING STATUS TO LOCAL CITIZENS.
Our Department of Labor does not enforce the law they supported. How should we stop scams, schemes, and rampant labor and immigration fraud? Why would they do this and who does it benefit? I would guess it helps businesses who prefer cheap labor. This hurts every local family in the commonwealth, directly or indirectly, and must be addressed. We have foreign nationals operating businesses here with minimal investment in the CNMI. Many of these foreign owned companies are not hiring local citizens? THIS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE PEOPLE HERE PUT A STOP TO IT.
P.L. 15-108 attempts to keep the indigent guest worker in servitude, perhaps because the Saipan Chamber of Commerce helped draft this law. Despicable business operators have caused the situation we find in our community today. The guest worker lands employment with a small business owned by a foreign national. The business owner knows the worker desperately needs a job and can’t afford to quit. The foreign national owner may even under pay the guest worker. This practice is a symbiotic relationship as it may give the worker grounds for a labor action and a right to stay in the CNMI without employment.
Small businesses are defaming local citizens here with abusive labor practices and previous legislation has targeted workers instead of the foreign business owners. The Legislature should enact laws to penalize these operators out of business. I suggest a $10,000 fine for the first offence, after which the CNMI may seize assets including property before, during, and after their (the business owners) deportation. Facing tough penalties, residents colluding with foreign nationals in shill or shell companies would end their involvement with such activity in the CNMI. Penalizing illegal operators would open employment to local kids in many areas and create a higher level of service, infinitely more important to our struggling tourism industry than cheap labor.
We should offer a bounty, open a fraud hotline, or enact whistleblower laws to run cheap businesses off the island. Hopefully, the feds will strictly enforce U.S. investor guidelines to aid cleanup in the aftermath of the textile industry, but either way, our Legislature should take action before federalization does.
RON HODGES
Puerto Rico, Saipan
