H-2B Visa Program
Background
The H-2B program provides temporary admission of foreign workers to the U.S. to perform temporary non-agricultural work, if unemployed U.S. workers cannot be found to take these jobs. Many employers from the lodging, restaurant, landscaping and tourism industries rely on the H-2B program to fill seasonal jobs when U.S. workers are not available. The H-2B program is the only legal way for many small businesses to hire foreign, seasonal workers.
The H-2B visa is subject to a statutory numerical limit. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the total number of temporary workers who may be issued H-2B visas in a fiscal year is capped at 66,000. The statutory cap has been reached in every year since 2004.
NFIB members are concerned about a number of aspects of the program: The number of workers allowed into the country each year, the way those workers are allotted and allocated, the paperwork involved in the hiring of these workers and complicated rules which go along with the hiring of these workers.
110th Congress
NFIB is a member of the H-2B Workforce Coalition, which promotes a stable and reliable seasonal workforce program. NFIB is pushing Congress to permanently address the statutory cap rules, update regional H-2B petition formulas and find ways to streamline the H-2B petition process.
NFIB supports S. 998, the Save our Seasonal Business Act, and H.R. 1843, the companion bill in the House. The bills were introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (Md.) and Bart Stupak (Mich.), respectively. The legislation makes the three-year return worker exemption permanent. Specifically, this means that a worker is exempt from the statutory cap (66,000 per year) for up to three years after the worker first attains H-2B status. For employers who have been in the program for years, these H-2B workers are a critical element to their success. Many returning workers bring institutional knowledge that employers depend on, thereby eliminating the need for retraining new employees on a yearly basis. Furthermore, these workers have already been screened by the government, have returned home in previous years and have proved their trustworthiness.
NFIB also supports efforts to fix the cap by including a market-based regulator on the base cap number. Addressing the cap with a market-based regulator allows those employers who are using the system for the first time fair access to these temporary workers. A market-based regulator brings flexibility to the program and would prevent shut down of the H-2B program in the middle of the year because the arbitrary cap was reached too early.
The H-2B Workforce Coalition is also addressing capacity issues at the Department of Labor by providing guidance and resources to help streamline the process and allow employers access to the H-2B workers by the "date of need." There have been too many instances where government red tape has delayed the process. The coalition will address these delays to make sure the H-2B program runs more smoothly.
