Free Republic

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine's U.S. senators are working with a bipartisan group of colleagues to call for an increased number of work visas to help small businesses find seasonal workers. Republican Susan Collins and independent Angus King are asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to bump the number of H-2B visas...They want the department to increase the 66,000 cap on the visas to more than 135,000.

The Department of Homeland Security announced at 3:46 pm today [Friday] that it will allow various U.S. employers 15,000 additional H-2B workers this summer; they will do unskilled, non-agricultural seasonal work...The 15,000 will be in addition to the 66,000 permits in this program that have already been issued in keeping with the long-standing statutory ceiling.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen raised the cap on H-2B visas after determining there were not enough qualified US workers to meet the needs of American employers, the department said. The same situation occurred last year, although Homeland Security did not grant extra visas until July.

Eddie Devine voted for President Donald Trump because he thought he would be good for American business. Now, he says, the Trump administration’s restrictions on seasonal foreign labor may put him out of business. “I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,” said Devine, owner of Harrodsburg-based Devine Creations Landscaping. “I feel so stupid.” Devine says it has been years since he could find enough dependable, drug-free American workers for his $12-an-hour jobs mowing and tending landscapes for cemeteries, shopping centers and apartment complexes across Central Kentucky. So for years he has hired 20 seasonal workers, mostly from Guatemala,...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly has promised the big business lobby tens of thousands of cheaper, blue-collar foreign workers despite President Donald Trump’s ‘Hire American’ initiative. During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kelly told Senators that he was lobbied by the financial and open borders lobby to expand the H-2B visa, and also by pro-American worker groups who see the visa as a detriment to Americans’ wages and job opportunities. “They’re caving to the business interest, rather than the people that elected them,” pro-American lawyer John Miano told Breitbart Texas. “Everyone but the very top...

House GOP Leadership: Foreign Worker Increase Needed Because of “Labor Shortage” by MARK KRIKORIAN December 17, 2015 House GOP Whip Steve Scalise sent an e-mail to his members this morning defending the immigration increase that the Republican leadership had secretly slipped into the omnibus funding bill. (It is shown below.) The provision would potentially quadruple the issuance of H-2B worker visas, which are for non-agricultural seasonal jobs. The visas are used to import cheap labor for ski resorts, hotels, factories, landscapers, and others. (See this 2010 paper on this racket by a former State department visa officer.) Most of the...

Door slams on foreign landscape workers April 21, 2005 BY ART GOLAB Staff Reporter Hundreds of Mexican workers who used to come legally to the Chicago area every spring to do landscaping work have been denied seasonal work visas, leaving landscapers scrambling to find employees to mow and maintain lawns. One Lake Bluff company applied for more than 150 visas and got none. Those slots make up half the company's seasonal work force, many of them regulars who have come up in the spring for several years. "They are family members and friends of our current workers who count on...

  Finishing lunch at Kuyaba, a restaurant on the beach in Negril, Jamaica, 2,000 miles away from the reality of work, freezing temperatures and a fresh snowfall, a waiter extended a pen to sign the bill.    Reality crept in: the insignia on the pen advertised The Chatham Wayside Inn, Main Street. Wondering if the pen was left from the previous day’s dinner, the question of its origin is posed to the waiter.            “No mon, that’s my pen,” responded Hopeton Lee.            For the past two summer seasons Lee has worked the bar and restaurant at the centerpiece Main Street inn,...