RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - Hospitality businesses in South Dakota’s Black Hills area are having trouble finding enough workers for the busy tourist season.
Many business owners look beyond U.S. borders to fill summer jobs, but the expiration of a federal law last September has reduced the number of temporary guest workers allowed into the country. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced last week that it has already received enough applications from businesses to reach the 2017 cap for seasonal nonagricultural work, the Rapid City Journal (https://bit.ly/2nEFpVA ) reported.
“The workers just aren’t here to be had,” said Mike Atkinson, a Mount Rushmore Resort official whose company relies on foreign workers to clean rooms and do laundry.
Some employees from overseas develop lasting ties with employers and return year after year for the same seasonal work. The Palmer Gulch resort is just one tourism-reliant business that uses returning workers and has an on-site dormitory for its summer employees, who usually come from Mexico.
The expired law was a demand-based exemption for the 1990 law capping foreign worker admittance at 66,000 per fiscal year. The 2015 exemption resulted in the issuance of more than 84,600 visas during the 2016 fiscal year.
Republican Rep. Jack Bergman from Michigan introduced a returning worker exemption bill this week that was similar to past legislation granting exemptions to workers counted against the gap.
Some lawmakers from both Democratic and Republican parties have opposed the guest-worker program because of anti-immigration rhetoric or using the system as indentured servitude. But employers in the Black Hills said their unique, local labor conditions make it difficult to hire U.S. workers.
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Information from: Rapid City Journal, https://www.rapidcityjournal.com
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