Current law limits the number of H-2B visas issued to 66,000 a year, but a provision in the budget bill passed through Congress this week would allow that number to double. According to the Department of Labor, the 66,000 cap has already been reached this year, and visas for more than 120,000 positions were requested.
Just two weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order vowing to crack down on a program designed to import high-skilled foreign labor, a provision slipped into the budget could double the number of H-2B visas, the Washington Post reported.
The H-2B program has drawn strong bipartisan support in the past because lawmakers have a vested interest in supporting their states’ critical industries—whether it’s tourism in Rhode Island, crab picking in Maryland, skiing in Colorado or logging in Washington. But some senators are criticizing their colleagues’ efforts to bypass public debate about changing immigration law, the Post reported.
Current law limits the number of such visas issued to 66,000 a year. That number doubles in the budget bill that sailed through the House and Senate this week and headed to the president’s desk on May 4, the Post reported.
The draft bill allows the Secretary of Homeland Security, after consulting with the Secretary of Labor, to increase the number of foreign workers “upon determination that the needs of American businesses cannot be satisfied in fiscal year 2017 with United States workers who are willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary non-agricultural labor.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the Post reported.
The 66,000 cap has already been reached this year. Visas for more than 120,000 positions were requested, according to Department of Labor statistics, the Post reported.
Paul Mendelsohn, lobbyist for the National Association of Landscape Professionals, said the industry would prefer to hire locally, but can’t find Americans to do the the work despite the fact that most jobs start at $12 an hour, the Post reported.
“If anyone walks in and can pick up a shovel and do hard labor, then companies are pretty much required to hire them,” Mendelsohn said.
Trump has used the visas to hire temporary workers at his golf resorts in Palm Beach and Jupiter, Fla., the Post reported.
“I’ve hired in Florida during the prime season—you could not get help,” Trump said during a 2015 primary debate. “Everybody agrees with me on that. They were part-time jobs. You needed them, or we just might as well close the doors, because you couldn’t get help in those hot, hot sections of Florida.”
Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat, issued a statement this week calling on their congressional colleagues to remove the provision and give the Judiciary Committee time to consider any changes to immigration laws, the Post reported.
“This move by leadership and appropriators cedes portions of this authority to the executive branch without a public debate,” Grassley and Feinstein said. “We understand the needs of employers who rely on seasonal H-2B workers if the American workforce can’t meet the demand, but we are also aware of the potential side effects of flooding the labor force with more temporary foreign workers, including depressed wages for all workers in seasonal jobs.”
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