Calvo & Bordallo ask Guam’s friend at DOD for China visa waiver help
The Governor and Congresswoman are putting an issue back in front of their friend, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work: Guam-CNMI Visa Waiver with China. They wrote a joint letter to him asking him to renew DOD’s push for Guam.
There are two reasons both Gov. Calvo and Congresswoman Bordallo have higher hopes about DOD pushing the Secretary of Homeland Security for the visa waiver:
1. Secretary Work was the federal official two years ago who brought several federal entities to the table to get us the closest we’d ever been to approval of the China visa waiver. When he left his post as Under Secretary of the Navy to join the private sector, Guam lost a valuable ally in its push for the program.
2. Secretary Work rejoins DOD as its second-in-command. He is considerably more influential. The Governor and the Congresswoman hope we can use this influence to convince all vested federal agencies to approve of the visa waiver program.
When Secretary Work was the USN, the three leaders left off with DOD’s support of the visa waiver, provided the FBI’s counterintelligence concerns are addressed. At the time, then-USN Work was able to gather the support of then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.
Some time after Carter and Work left the Defense Department, DOD representatives began expressing concerns about the program. Both Calvo and Bordallo are concerned that — without their allies’ presence and support at DOD — the program might be derailed. Now that Work is in Carter’s previous post, they believe the time is right to ask Work to bring all the parties back to the table and renew DOD’s commitment to a China Visa Waiver program for Guam.
Calvo and Bordallo intend to follow up their letter with an in-person meeting with the Deputy Secretary during the Governor’s next visit to Washington, D.C.
The link to the joint letter, which addresses many other details and issues, is below.
Bordallo-Calvo-Letter-on-Guam-China-Parole-Authority-10-June-2014-1
