SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands – Members of both the Saipan Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel Association of Northern Mariana Islands (HANMI) told Governor Benigno Fitial that CNMI must find its own solutions to immigration and minimum wage issues, and not cave to pressure from Washington.  The CNMI economy depends heavily on foreign workers and tourism, and S. 2483 would federalize CNMI’s immigration policies, which have been dealt with locally since CNMI became a United States dependent territory.

Jim Arenovski, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, said, “We need to be able to rely on our own organizations to go out there and tell them about the state of our economy.  We need to be able to go out there and meet with the folks in the committees that have jurisdictions over us.”  [Note: CNMI does not currently have a delegate to the United States federal government, an anomaly among the dependent territories.]  Arenovski believes that S.2483 was drafted to solve problems that no longer exist in CNMI.  “Our economy is completely different,” he said, “it no longer stands on two legs, it stands on one leg and that’s tourism.  We need to come up with some solutions.”

HANMI chairwoman Lynn Knight enumerated four reasons S.2483 is inappropriate for CNMI: it will cause population decline because of its cap on foreign workers, it does not provide a long-term solution for the CNMI workforce, the H-visa system is too inflexible to work for CNMI, and the tourist waiver would be inadequate for CNMI to maintain its current markets.

For more information, please see:

Marianas Variety – Fitial: NMI may lose foreign workers by 2013 if federalization bill becomes law – 06 March 2008

Saipan Tribune – ‘4 reasons why S.2483 won’t work for us’ – 06 March 2008

Saipan Tribune – ‘NMI must have a plan, alternative to S.2483’ – 09 March 2008