Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Areas Tony Babauta will come to the CNMI and conduct the next forums himself, she said.
“Employees need to know what they expect from the [federal] government. And the CNMI needs certainty; they don’t need confusion, so I am here to stop the confusion and tell you what I do know as facts,” Brown told the guest workers on Thursday. “I was not authorized to talk before, but I am now.”
She said the CNMI labor department cannot revoke the umbrella permits it earlier issued to nonresidents.
Hundreds of guest workers, other nonresidents, including their children, attended the forum at American Memorial Park’s amphitheater.
Brown discussed the umbrella permit and federal laws that protect refugees and prohibit discrimination in the work place.
“You cannot be discriminated in your employment because of your nationality or origin of citizenship,” she added.
She declined to “speculate” on the improved status that guest workers are hoping for.
A former CNMI attorney general and Senate legal counsel, Brown said the umbrella permit is valid until Nov. 27, 2011 and nonresident workers are no longer required to pay fees to the CNMI Department of Labor.
There’s no more processing fee and if a worker is asked to pay for it, the employer can be charged criminally, she added.
A guest worker with an umbrella permit can have a part-time job, she said.
Moreover, the federal government does not require employers to seek permission from CNMI Labor when renewing the contracts of their guest workers, Brown said.
For those without an umbrella permit, their legal stay in the CNMI will be determined by the expiration date of their entry permits, she added.
She advised guest workers whose umbrella permits were revoked and who were disallowed to transfer to come to her office.
