Homeland Security said Monday it will add 20,000 new slots to a seasonal guest-worker program this winter, including thousands of visas set aside for people from countries responsible for much of the illegal immigrant surge.
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that as the country grapples with the pandemic, businesses are struggling to hire Americans and need a dedicated source of foreign workers to fill job openings.
The H-2B program is used by seasonal non-agriculture workers for jobs in places such as ski or beach resorts, amusement parks, seafood processing plants and lawn care businesses. Employers are to certify that they tried to find American workers at competitive wages before they go looking for H-2B visas to fill the slots.
Congress caps the program at 66,000 visas a year, half to be doled out in the winter season and half in the summer. But in recent years, lawmakers have also given Homeland Security and the Labor Department the power to add more visas if there is a need.
Mr. Mayorkas said there is a need.
“At a time of record job growth, additional H-2B visas will help to fuel our nation’s historic economic recovery,” he said.
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The Trump administration regularly added more visas in the summer season, and the Biden team made 22,000 visas available in April for the summer season.
But businesses complained those moves came so late in the year that they made it impossible to plan. Landscaping companies said they had to forgo clients and give up business because they didn’t have enough workers.
This year marks the first time an administration has added more visas in the winter season.
Homeland Security said 13,500 of the slots will be reserved for “returning workers,” or people who had won H-2B visas in one of the last three years. The other 6,500 are reserved for people from Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which account for a large portion of the current illegal immigrant surge at the border.
Business groups cheered the move but said it’s not enough.
The U.S. Travel Association said the travel and hospitality industries alone have 1.8 million job openings, and Homeland Security must find more visas.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which backs stricter immigration limits, said the increase will force unemployed Americans to have to compete to get jobs.
“President Biden often portrays himself as a man from the ‘working class’ who supports American workers, yet his administration continues to do the opposite,” said RJ Hauman, director of government relations at FAIR.
He said the H-2B program “is rife with abuse.”
In one example from Maryland, a seafood and ice company hired H-2B workers for low-paying jobs but gave them roles that should have commanded higher pay. That move denied Americans the chance to take those jobs at higher pay.
The company, Captain Phip’s, used at least 142 H-2B visa workers from 2013 to 2018, though investigators couldn’t pinpoint exactly how many of those involved cheating.
Captain Phip’s also employed illegal immigrants, including several who’d been arrested and were in deportation proceedings but were released while awaiting their cases. The company’s owner said in court documents that he figured they could keep working.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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