With the prospect that Congress will adjourn before the presidential election without addressing the ailing H-2B visa program, golf course superintendents who use the program to staff their seasonal maintenance operations are reconsidering their plans for next spring.
Dan Tolson, superintendent at 3 Creek Ranch in Jackson, Wyo., had brought in workers through the H-2B program during the 2006 and 2007 seasons, but didn’t get the 35 workers he applied for this year because of the restrictions of the number of visas issued.
| H-2B Fly-In planned |
Save Small Business, a coalition of H-2B employers, is hosting a Fly-In in Washington on Wednesday, Sept. 9, for H-2B supporters. Organizers say it’s the last opportunity to lobby legislators about the importance of passing a cap-relief provision before Congress adjourns on Sept. 26. For more information, visit www.savesmallbusiness.org. |
The government caps the H-2B program at 66,000 annual visas – 33,000 allotted for each half of the federal fiscal year (October through March and April through September). In 2005 and 2006, Congress passed temporary cap-relief provisions, allowing returning workers not to count against the cap. The so-called returning-worker exemption allowed tens of thousands more temporary workers into the country in each of those seasons.
Last fall, the returning-worker exemption was up for renewal for this year, and Congress failed to pass that provision, requiring the government to stick to the cap this year. Because of the reduction in visas issued, many employers didn’t receive any of the workers they were counting on. H-2B supporters say it’s likely Congress won’t pass the returning-worker exemption this fall, shutting many employers – including some golf course superintendents – out of the program for the second year in a row.
“H-2B worked great for us for the first few years,” Tolson says. “We got the same guys for three years in a row, and they stayed for 10 months. It’s a great program if there are enough visas to go around.”
After not getting his H-2B workers this season, Tolson decided not to apply for H-2B workers for next year. Last year, he paid a $5,000 nonrefundable fee (including administrative and agency fees) to apply for the workers he never received.
Because he believes Congress won’t pass the returning-worker exemption again this year, Tolson is finding different avenues to recruit workers. In March of this year, when he realized he probably was not going to get any H-2B workers, he researched and applied to participate in the J-1 visa program, which brings foreign college students to the U.S. to work. He brought in 16 students from Ukraine and Turkey. Though there were some obstacles – all of the students had to be trained and their visas were only valid for four months – Tolson worked around the issues.
“I set it up so the Ukrainians would come early in May and the Turks would come late and stay through the end of September, so we were strong in the middle and light on the shoulders,” he says.
The J-1 program is easier to manage and cheaper than the H-2B program, Tolson says. All he had to do was complete a free application, accept the students who applied to work for him and help them set up their housing. The H-2B program is a much more costly and paperwork-intensive process, he says.
In addition to bringing back four of the Ukrainian students next season, Tolson plans to ramp up his local recruiting, which can be difficult in a resort town where not a lot of people live year-round, he says.
Paul Hallock, superintendent at RedTail Mountain Golf Club in Mountain City, Tenn., has had many of the same troubles. The club used the H-2B program for two years until this spring, when visa cap restrictions prevented Hallock’s Mexican crewmembers from returning to the U.S. for the golf maintenance season.
Around May 15 – a month into the season – Hallock finally gave up hope Congress was going to pass a cap relief provision and his 10 H-2B workers would arrive.
“We just suffered through the first month with our full-time staff, and since then, we’ve gone through about 30 to 35 local guys to keep those 10 spots full,” he says.
Even upping the starting wage from $8 per hour to $10 per hour hasn’t helped with retention.
“The reason we’ve gone through so many is that it’s labor-intensive,” Hallock says. “People usually have had enough after two weeks. The course is located in one of the poorest counties in Tennessee, where work ethic and job skills aren’t the highest priority.”
Because Hallock believes election-year politics is preventing Congress from getting anything done, he’s not confident legislators will pass the returning-worker exemption for 2009 before they leave Washington to campaign for the presidential election. He’s working on his contingency plan, which includes starting an internship program for turf students and recruiting local workers earlier in the spring. He’s not abandoning the H-2B program altogether, though. He’s applying to receive the workers a month earlier than in previous years in hopes he’ll make it under the cap.
Does he think next year will be easier than this year?
“It couldn’t get much worse than summer, so I guess that’s a positive note,” Hallock says. “It can’t get worse.”
