Ensuring We Are Prepared

Floor Speech

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Mr. SABLAN. Madam Speaker, as climate change accelerates, it is more important than ever that we put our infrastructure in good working order, hardened against the powerful typhoons and other natural disasters that are associated with a warming planet.

Today, I am introducing legislation that will ensure we have an adequate workforce in the Northern Mariana Islands to finish repairs from the typhoons that struck our islands in recent years and to build new infrastructure able to withstand future storms.

Congress made the decision that additional foreign workers would be needed for this purpose, when we passed the FY20 omnibus appropriation, U.S. Public Law 116-94. Title IX provided up to 3,000 permits for Commonwealth-only Transitional Workers (CW-1s) specifically for disaster-related construction projects during fiscal 2020, 2021, and 2022.

In the succeeding years, however, more funding has become available-- for the Marianas public water in the American Rescue Plan Act, for better roads in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, for solid waste systems on the islands of Rota and Tinian in the 2019 Disaster Relief Act--and those projects will all require skilled labor.

Those projects will also occur in a timeframe beyond 2022. Not only do large-scale infrastructure projects take time to design, bid, and build, but the money is scheduled over a five-year period in many cases. Add to that the impact of the pandemic on business capacity and the supply chain and the need for workers stretches for years ahead.

How many workers will be necessary and when projects will be ready to proceed is not easily predicted. So, the legislation I have introduced today simply authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Governor of the Marianas to make the determination when construction workers are needed. The Governor will request the foreign workers to augment the Marianas labor force. The Secretary will then decide whether the request is justified, whether qualified U.S. workers are truly not available, and whether adding foreign workers would in any way reduce the wage-setting power of local, U.S. workers in our islands.

Congress has made an historic investment in the Mariana Islands in the form of disaster recovery assistance and in funding infrastructure that can withstand future disasters. But that funding will need labor. The legislation I am introducing today will help ensure that labor needs are met, that projects are built, and that the Marianas is in a stronger position to withstand the corning climate change.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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