So many rooms... so few workers
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Employers insist they wouldn't be applying for seasonal-worker visas (known as H-2Bs) if they could find enough people locally. State labor departments have to certify that businesses took sufficient steps to advertise openings and recruit workers before they can get the visas.
"A lot of American workers won't work these [seasonal] jobs - they want something with higher income or prestige," says Roger Herman, author of "Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People." He also attributes summer shortages to the fact that "there's a strong entrepreneurial bent among the millennial generation" - with young people starting their own summer painting or landscaping businesses rather than submitting to a boss at a full-time job.
Skeptics often accuse employers of exploiting foreign workers in low-paying jobs. Employers of H-2B workers counter that they are required to pay prevailing wages, typically above minimum wage. Many workers return year after year, so they receive promotions and raises, says Sally Bowles, director of human resources for the Catania Hospitality Group in Hyannis, Mass. The four hotels and restaurants she works with hire an extra 250 people each summer, including 50 to 60 from Jamaica, Nepal, and Bulgaria. She isn't panicking about the H2-B visa cap: "I'm one of the lucky ones who got hers," she says.
Beyond the hospitality industry, a range of businesses have been caught off guard by the visa cap. Salmon-roe processors in Alaska, for instance, typically bring in Japanese workers with specific skills so that the product meets standards for sale in Japan. Without that market, the jobs of 1,000 US workers could be on the line, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in Washington.
Other employers affected by the cap include horse breeders in Kentucky, firefighting helicopter crews, and specialty summer camps such as one in Maryland that relies on Brazilian soccer coaches and players. AILA estimates that 10,000 H-2B visa applications (which can request multiple employees) have not gone through because of the cap.
Businesses can't apply for H-2Bs until 120 days before they need the workers, and this year, all the visas for the fiscal year (October through September) had been distributed before some summer employers could even send in the paperwork. Granting more visas would not displace Americans, says Joanna Carson, a business-immigration associate at AILA. Seasonal foreign workers, she says, help businesses "to create more jobs and bring in more income."
Before the H-2B visa category was created in the early 1990s, hotel managers often worked 18-hour shifts in the summer and never took a day off. Ms. Honey has had her Boothbay Harbor hotel for 39 years and says that before she started hiring visa workers about nine years ago, shehad "unbelievable turnover."
Financial manager Laura Bradford wonders not only what they'll do this summer, but what their regulars from Jamaica will do if there's no visa extension. "In Jamaica, they have to pay for children to go to school - that's one reason they come here, so their children will have better jobs when they grow up."
