The Washington Times
The summer hospitality industry will try to win Senate passage this week of a bill to raise the visa cap for seasonal foreign workers after it was blocked last week by lawmakers concerned about U.S. unemployment and higher immigration.
Backers say the bill is necessary because the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing the cap of 66,000 visas this fiscal year for the first time, leaving summer vacation industries tens of thousands of workers short.
"Nobody expected this to happen. This hit everybody like a ton of bricks," said Hank Lavery, executive vice president of Century Pool Management in Alexandria.
The workers fill a variety of positions, such as those at seashore resort restaurants and hotels, on Gulf of Mexico shrimp boats and in the Alaskan salmon industry. These jobs often run longer than students' summer vacations, said Mr. Lavery, who created the Web site www.raisethecap.org to push for the bill.
"The jobs these people are taking — employers have worked to find Americans that want the jobs. They advertised, they followed all the rules, they offered bonuses. They follow the wages set by the government, which are usually pretty high, and they still can't find Americans to take these jobs," Mr. Lavery said. "Now this is to the point where if Congress doesn't act — Congress, the president — they're all going to blamed for destroying the summer."
But Rosemary Jenks, a lobbyist for NumbersUSA.com, which supports immigration restrictions, said given the unemployment rates, the issue could blow up.
"Americans certainly make the connection between jobs and the flooding of the labor market with foreign workers," she said.
She also said unemployment statistics show there are Americans who can hold those jobs, pointing to the 9 percent unemployment rate among the 12 million Americans without a high school diploma, and an unemployment rate of 40 percent among black men of working age.