Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2005
EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (Senate - April 13, 2005)
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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, let me begin my remarks by commending the Senator from Maryland for her work on this very important issue. She and I, along with Senator Gregg of New Hampshire, Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts, and many of our colleagues, have joined forces in a bipartisan way to address an issue that affects the small businesses in our States.
Many American businesses--particularly those in the hospitality, forest products, and fishery industries--rely on seasonal employees to supplement their local workers during the peak season. That is certainly true in my home State of Maine. We have many seasonal restaurants and hotels that need to greatly expand their workforces during the summer and fall months. Many of them, after fruitless efforts to hire American workers, have found that it has worked very well for them to hire in the past foreign workers under the H-2B visa program. But this year all 66,000 available H-2B visas were used up within the first few months of the fiscal year--in fact, in early January. The Department of Homeland Security announced that it would stop accepting applications for H-2B visas.
This creates a particular inequity for States such as mine that have a later tourism season. By the time Maine restaurant owners, hotel owners, and other tourism-related small businesses can apply for these workers, there are no more visas.
My colleagues from Maryland and Idaho have raised very important points. These are workers who often return year after year to the same familiar family business in Maine. When their work is done, they leave and return home to their home countries. They play by the rules. The businesses play by the rules. They are not hiring people who are here illegally. They are hiring people through this special program.
Without these visas, employers are simply going to be unable to hire a sufficient number of workers to keep their businesses running during the peak season. Many of these businesses fear this year they will have to decrease their hours of operation during what is their busiest and most profitable time of year. This would translate into lost jobs for American workers, lost income for American businesses, and lost tax revenues for our States.
These losses will be significant. We must help them be avoided. That is why I have worked with my colleagues in introducing the legislation upon which this amendment is based. It is the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2005. It would offer relief to these businesses by excluding from the cap returning foreign workers who were counted against the cap within the past 3 years and to address the regional inequities in the system. It would limit the number of H-2B visas that could be issued in the first 6 months of the fiscal year to half of the total number available under the cap.
By allocating visas equally between each half of the year, employers across the country operating both in the winter and the summer seasons will have a fair and equal opportunity to hire these much-needed workers.
Let me emphasize what, perhaps, is the most important point in this debate. That is, employers are not permitted to hire these foreign workers unless they can prove they have tried but have been unable to locate available American workers through advertising and other means.
As a safeguard, current regulations require the U.S. Department of Labor to certify that such efforts have occurred. In Maine, as in other States, our State Department of Labor takes the lead in ensuring that employers have taken sufficient steps--including advertising--to try to find local workers to fill these positions. Indeed, that is the preference of my Maine employers. They would much rather be able to hire local workers. Indeed, they do hire local workers, but there simply are not enough local people to fill these seasonal jobs that peak during the summer and the fall.
Comprehensive, long-term solutions are necessary for this and many other immigration issues. But we have an immediate need. The summer season is fast approaching. Tourism is critical to the economy of Maine. But if the tourism businesses are not able to hire a sufficient number of workers to operate their businesses, the economy will suffer and American jobs will be lost. It is exactly as the Senator from Maryland so eloquently explained in her statement.
We need to make sure we act now to avoid a real crisis for these seasonal businesses this summer and fall.
I salute the Senator from Maryland for her work on this. I hope my colleagues will join in supporting this amendment. This vehicle may not be the very best for this proposal, but we do need to act. Time is running out.
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