The summer season is only weeks away, and while that’s good news for many, Island business owners who depend on foreign workers with H-2B visas are scrambling.
Every summer, businesses across the Cape and Islands rely on a wave of foreign workers with H-2B visas to work at jobs that would otherwise go unfilled. H-2B visas are good for nine months, and can be renewed for up to three years.
The sea change on all things immigration by the Trump administration has made the fraught process of importing seasonal help even more vexing this year.
The H-2B cap of 33,000 for the second half of FY17 was reached on March 13, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) website. Until this year, “returning workers” on H-2B visas were not counted against the quota, but the returning-worker exemption was nixed by the Republican majority despite efforts of congressional Democrats, including Congressman Bill Keating. An additional complication for Cape and Island businesses is that employers can only submit H-2B applications 90 days before the worker’s start date. According to the Department of Labor, H-2B visa applications in the first week of January, typically the busiest week of the year, were up 93 percent over the same week in 2016.
In a conversation with The Times on Monday, Rep. Keating said that a provision in the FY 2017 budget, which he expects will pass at the end of this week, may ease the impending labor crunch, but he stressed the word “may” because the decision ultimately rests in the hands of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.
“I’m encouraged that we’ve achieved some bipartisan agreement,” he said. “The door hasn’t been shut in our face as the result of us creating some pressure to move it forward, but it’s now in the hands of the Trump administration and the Secretary of Homeland Security. [Secretary Kelly] will consult with the Secretary of Labor, and then he has the discretion if he’ll raise beyond the cap.”
The 2017 budget provision states the H-2B cap may be raised to its historic highest level, established in 2007, just under 130,000, but it does not reinstate the returning-worker provision. Mr. Keating expressed concern that the new process could cause additional delays at a time when the clock is ticking loudly for Cape and Islands business owners. Under the Trump administration, CIS, an arm of Homeland Security, will also screen visa workers.
“We’re fighting people who see this as an immigration issue, not a small business issue, which it is,” he said. “We’re pleased that the door is open, but we’re working to see if this can be done in a timely fashion to help our constituents — that’s a major concern.”
Labor pains
In the meantime, concern grows on the homefront. “It’s not going well,” Lark Hotel CEO Rob Blood told The Times. “We’re in a tough spot.” Lark Hotels owns and operates numerous hotels in New England and California, and three on Martha’s Vineyard — the Sydney and the Christopher in Edgartown, and Summercamp, the former Wesley Hotel, on Oak Bluffs Harbor, which is going into its second year of operation. Summercamp opened this past Friday, and will close at the end of October.
“We’re having a hard time at all of our properties,” he said. “We’re hopeful the vote will help reinstate the returning-workers provision. It’s manageable right now; we can take care of the eight rooms we have booked tonight. But we’re struggling.”
Mr. Blood said he planned to hire roughly 30 J-1 and H-2B employees for Summercamp, 20 for the housekeeping staff — there are currently three. He said the J-1 visas have not been as problematic as the H-2B visas, but the processing at European embassies has slowed considerably from last year.
“J-1s can only be here for part of our season, so they still don’t fill our full need,” he said. “I know some Nantucket resorts did some heavy recruiting in Florida and the ski resorts. We’re looking at the Cape, we’re looking at Boston and all over New England. Even though we have housing for staff, it’s hard to attract college students and people from off-Island for housekeeping jobs. Our greatest challenge is that there is not enough local interest in housekeeping positions. We’re very, very interested in hiring local folks.”
Mark Snider, co-owner of Winnetu Oceanside Resort in Edgartown, told The Times roughly 40 percent of his staff, many of them longtime employees he considers family, may not come back this summer. “It’s very frustrating, because people who are out of country, who are loyal to the Vineyard and loyal to us, are the ones who can’t come back,” he said. “They pay full taxes, they contribute, and they are very involved in the Vineyard, so that’s been very hard.”
Mr. Snider said he’s been aggressively recruiting from ski resorts and from winter resorts in warmer climes, with limited success. “We always find a way to make it work, but it’s very frustrating for us and for our employees,” he said.
“We’re definitely scrambling,” Steven Ansara, manager at Nancy’s Restaurant in Oak Bluffs, told The Times. “We have ads up everywhere, Facebook, Craigslist, you name it. I think people don’t realize it’s almost impossible to find [Americans] that are willing to do the work.”
Mr. Ansara said he’s had good experiences with Island high school students for unskilled positions, but they can work only a limited number of hours.
Nancy’s employs about a dozen H-2B employees each summer, who have been returning for years, most of them from Jamaica. The restaurant has already made a considerable investment in H-2B employees — the visa processing alone can cost $4,000 per person. Nancy’s also pays for transportation to the Vineyard.
Like Summercamp and Winnetu, Nancy’s provides housing, but with the exception of one hire from the Cape, applicants with experience have been scarce. “There’s not a lot of people who have the cooking and kitchen skills that our H-2Bs have,” Mr. Ansara said. “Some people say you should just pay higher wages and get American workers. But I don’t think they’d like to pay $29 for a hamburger.”
Mark Carchidi, an attorney with Antioch Associates in Yarmouth Port with 20 years of H-2B experience, has more than 150 clients, and he said many of them are concerned with the current state of affairs.
“My clients on both Islands have indicated that businesses are struggling,” he said. “There is a business in Nantucket with a sign that says ‘closed until further notice’ because they can’t get the help.” Mr. Carchidi said that if Secretary Kelly decides to raise the H-2B cap soon, Cape and Islands businesses could still get their visa workers before summer heats up.
“If they expedite the process, it could be from the middle of May to early June, if they raise the cap,” he said. “You talk to any of the employers, they’d love to have workers in place by Memorial Day.”
Mr. Carchidi added that the developments in Congress are also reason for optimism.
“We’re in much better shape today than we were last week,” he said. “A lot of that is due to Congressman Keating’s efforts. We just have to hope for the best.”