Spring is in the air and summer is around the corner, which means seasonal migrant workers – from gardeners to bartenders, golf course maintenance workers, hotel help, and many others – are needed badly. These are workers who come on three to six month seasonal visas and then go home each year.
We cheered when the Trump administration released the full 64,716 supplemental H-2B visas for seasonal workers authorized by law back in January. These non-immigrant visas are critical for many industries, chief among them, the golf and hospitality business. The president knows this firsthand because these hard-working guest workers keep the doors open at Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster, among hundreds of other operations.
Unfortunately, while the president acted promptly to authorize the visas, the agencies tasked with actually doing it have moved very slowly. We surveyed them to find out how bad it was and found that 58% of the seasonal business respondents expect their H-2B workers to now arrive more than a month late.
Over 40% of seasonal businesses told us that it may now be too late for them to be profitable this year.
There is a solution–establish a Certified Seasonal Employer Designation, creating a streamlined pathway for employers with a proven track record of H-2B participation, eliminating the uncertainty of the annual lottery for established seasonal employers.
The survey results are available here:
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