DMG - DELAWARE: Businesses feel effects of work visa cap

From my archive of press clippings:

Delmarva Media Group

DELAWARE: Businesses feel effects of work visa cap

By Summer HArlow • The News Journal • May 20, 2008

Al Parker misses his Mexican workers. All honest, hardworking and quick learners, they did the paving and excavating work in half the time it takes most U.S. workers to do the same job, said Parker, who owns A. Parker Paving Inc., in Sussex County.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Parker is among thousands of construction, landscaping and hospitality business owners across the country who, now at the height of their busy seasons, say they are unable to find American workers to do the jobs they have come to rely on legal, temporary immigrant labor to fulfill.

By law, these immigrants must be paid prevailing wages, they pay taxes and then at the end of the season they return home, expecting to be back the following year.

But after playing by the rules and resisting the lure of cheap unauthorized workers, business owners like Parker say the government is punishing them.

Congress has refused to allow more than 66,000 seasonal work visas, known as H-2B visas, to be issued this year.

Doled out twice a year, every one was snatched up the first day they became available this spring, leaving thousands of workers -- and employers -- out of luck.

In previous years, the visa cap was extended by not counting the number of returning workers against the limit. In 2006, 122,541 workers came into the country on H-2B visas."

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"Although they're denied workers, employers aren't refunded the thousands of dollars they spent to apply for the visas."