Opinion: in support of H-2B Email
News
Wednesday, March 14, 2018 06:00 AM


Steve SteeleOver the past several years there has been a significant change in the psyche of America. Nearly all of us that live in this great nation are here because someone in our family tree emigrated here in the past from another country to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones. However, today’s xenophobic assumptions that anyone who looks or sounds different from us is here illegally and stealing a job that a real “‘merican” could do is not only incorrect in most cases, but also has negative repercussions for all Americans. That is why I feel compelled to tell anyone that will listen why it is critical that America’s labor pool be augmented through non-immigrant, temporary worker visa programs, like H-2B, that provide workers willing to perform jobs that most Americans do not want – cleaning hotel rooms, mowing grass, and a myriad of other labor-intensive and often seasonal jobs – while at the same time raising pay and advancement opportunities for their American counterparts.

In the world of politics, nearly everything having to do with persons from another country gets lumped into the immigration debate. But H-2B is not an immigration issue – it is a business-labor issue! This program is a major win for ALL Americans, as you will see. Without it, wages and job opportunities for U.S. workers suffer, and U.S. businesses find themselves unable to obtain the most important commodity they need to be stable employers and to grow and thrive – employees.

In a time of rapid economic growth and relatively low unemployment nationwide, the H-2B program provides thousands of companies across the United States in industries as diverse as landscaping, hospitality, carnival, forestry, and seafood processing, with a source of reliable, temporary and, most importantly, legal labor. The United States government annually sets aside 66,000 temporary, non-immigrant, worker visas for the H-2B program – 33,000 for each half of the U.S. government’s fiscal year - that allow U.S. companies to support peak times with seasonal labor from countries like Mexico, Central America, and Jamaica when American workers are not available or willing to fill these critical job openings.

Hiring employees under the H-2B program is not cheap or easy. The average non-wage cost of an H-2B worker to an employer is about $1,000, and H-2B program qualifications and paperwork are exceptionally difficult and expensive for employers to navigate. The Department of Labor sets the prevailing wage workers are paid for this program, which varies based on position and location of the work. This wage is generally far above both required state and federal minimum wages and is the minimum that all workers in that job category, whether they are U.S workers or H-2B workers, must be paid. For example, while the federal minimum wage is $7.25 hourly and Colorado’s minimum wage is $10.20 hourly, the prevailing wage for H-2B landscape workers in Denver in 2018 is $14.51 hourly. As a result, the H-2B program helps to drive up hourly wages for many American workers. Maybe even more important is the fact that providing U.S employers with access to stable, reliable and legal labor sources provides U.S. workers with more opportunities to move into higher paying supervisory and management roles that would not exist without H-2B workers available to fill vacant labor positions.

The current challenge for U.S. employers is that, as difficult and expensive as the H-2B program is to use, it has unprecedented popularity among employers because there is a lack of domestic workers willing to fill available job openings and precious few sources of adequate legal, domestic labor to turn to for help. The beauty of the H-2B program is that many H-2B workers return to the same employers every year, resulting in a stable and trained workforce. These workers contribute to the local economies where they are employed and pay the same taxes, including social security and Medicare taxes, which their U.S. counterparts pay. This helps fund cash-strapped social programs critical to Americans but which H-2B workers cannot claim benefits against. They work for the term of their visa and then they return to their home countries and their families. H-2B workers are thoroughly screened by both their own country’s governments and the U.S. government prior to their admittance into the H-2B program, and their U.S. entry and exit are carefully monitored by U.S. immigration officials to ensure H-2B workers do not overstay or violate the terms of their temporary work visa. Other requirements, too numerous to mention here, are placed on H-2B employers that further protect U.S. jobs while providing domestic workers with higher wages and greater job-growth opportunities.

But the prospects for companies wanting to utilize this program are bleak at best. Skyrocketing demand for H-2B visas has strained the system to breaking and the cap has been met earlier and earlier every year. In 2018, the H-2B cap for the second half of the government’s fiscal year, which begins April 1, was met February 27th, earlier than ever before. On January 1st, 2018, the earliest date a business could file for an April 1st start date, employers filed a landslide of over 4,100 petitions totaling 81,600 workers, vying for only 33,000 open visa positions. The unprecedented demand now means at least 60% of companies that applied for H-2B workers will not receive them in 2018 without some type of Congressionally-mandated cap relief. While Congress had previously exempted returning workers from counting against the annual visa cap during times of high, national employment (according to BLS, unemployment nationally was 4.1% in January and Colorado was about 3%), the returning worker exemption has not been renewed since it expired at the end of 2016 due to negative political pressure.

It is now incumbent upon Congress to stand up for American workers by providing a permanent cap relief solution and at the very least including cap relief provisions in the upcoming omnibus spending bill on March 23rd. Whatever we each may personally believe about the immigration debate is not at issue here. Temporary, non-immigrant visa programs, like the H-2B program, do work for the benefit of every U.S citizen by allowing highly screened guest workers to come here and do jobs American workers are not available to do, pay taxes and support the local economy, then return to their home countries. I urge you to contact your Congressional representatives and senators and tell them to protect American workers by supporting H-2B cap relief.

Steve Steele is the Director of Business Operations at Keesen Landscape Management, Inc. and Secretary/Treasurer of the ALCC Board of Directors.

Read more in this issue of Colorado Green NOW:
Can trees cut work loss?
Prep your online reputation for spring
Taxability of sexual harassment settlements

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