Economy, foreign workers in the crossfire

Haidee V. Eugenio
Every morning and afternoon along Saipan’s scenic Beach Road, local residents and foreign workers armed with hook and line patiently wait for fish to bite their bait.

A turbulent economy has forced hundreds to turn their hobby of fishing into a necessity. 

Nowadays, families try to supplement food on the table with tuna, mahi mahi, mafute and other fish they could catch before and after regular work hours to save their money for other expenses such as utility bills and gasoline for their vehicles. 

“They raised the minimum wage to $4.05 an hour but employers, including the company I work for, have been allowed to cut work hours. From 40 hours per week plus overtime, many employees on the island are now working only 32 hours and that means lower pay.

Now I have to find ways to either earn more or save further by fishing with my friends instead of buying fish from the grocery store,” Reyland Yap, a 45-year old contract worker from the Philippines, told ISLANDS BUSINESS while fishing with two other friends on a fine Monday afternoon. 

Yap has been working as a shipping receiving clerk on Saipan for 14 years.

Besides reduced work hours and salaries, residents of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) also have to grapple with power rates that recently spiked by over 110 percent, a steadily rising gasoline price now at $5.05 a gallon, the once almighty garment industry now gasping for breath, and the still weak tourism sector.  Business gross revenues and government collections from taxes and fees are still at their lowest levels in years. 

Governor Benigno R. Fitial said the economy will worsen once the US government takes over the Northern Marianas’ immigration because of a law signed by US President George W. Bush on May 28.

The Northern Mariana Islands Immigration, Security and Labor Act requires the US Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to publish the new regulations within 180 days of the law’s date of enactment.

Fitial said the new law, which will take effect as early as June 2009, will lead to the deportation of about 20,000 foreign workers mostly from the Philippines, China, Bangladesh, Thailand and other Asian countries.

From engineers, architects, nurses, hotel staff, journalists to house workers and farmers, the local economy is reliant on foreign labor.

“The economic impact of this law is as serious as I feared during the Congressional hearings (in 2007). Foreign investors have withdrawn from potential commitments to the Commonwealth because of the uncertainty regarding their future access to an adequate workforce,” said Fitial.

But David Cohen, the former deputy assistant secretary of the US Department of the Interior for insular affairs and who helped draft the CNMI federalization law, said it is untrue that the new law requires all guest workers to be deported from the CNMI. The question of improved status for long-term guest workers is to be considered within two years.

“I have come to the conclusion that the only way to stabilize the CNMI workforce over the long term, in a manner consistent with the fairness objectives of the new law, would be to make long term guest workers eligible to apply for green cards.

That would help guest workers, but it would help locals and the economy even more.  Guest workers would no longer drive down wages for locals in the private sector, and business would have the opportunity to keep their best guest workers if they treat them fairly,” he said.

But officials from the US Department of Homeland Security who visited Saipan in mid-July told the Coalition of United Workers, a group of foreign workers, it is impossible for foreign workers in CNMI to be granted “green card” at least until the end of the transition period in 2014. 

Coalition president Irene Tantiado presented seven requests to the federal officials who will draft the regulations for the new immigration law, including immediate processing of H visas for qualified alien workers and limited amnesty for illegal foreign workers.

The federal officials told the workers’ group that they will look into their requests.

The Fitial administration is planning on filing a lawsuit against the United States for federalizing CNMI immigration.

“Our complaint focuses on the labor provisions of the legislation which are not and never have been part of the federal immigration laws. The complaint sets forth the economic injury that these provisions have caused, and will cause, to the Commonwealth,” the governor said.

He said the deportation of some 20,000 foreign workers and their families from the Commonwealth is predicted to reduce the CNMI’s economic output by at least 50 percent—whether it happens in 2014 or years later.

“It will increase out-migration of our own people to the States. It will reduce our total population from its present 60,000 to about 35,000—and a drastic reshaping of the entire community with very troubling social, economic and political consequences,” he said.