[B]HYANNIS, Mass. [\/B](AP)\u2014Breakfast will not be served this summer at Cape Cod\u2019s Crown & Anchor. The Provincetown resort and entertainment complex usually hires 10 to 12 people from Jamaica and Eastern Europe each summer as cooks, housekeepers and maintenance workers. But new visa restrictions mean the guest workers it used last year aren\u2019t expected back. With fewer workers, the resort\u2019s management realized it wouldn\u2019t have the manpower to serve three meals a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to run overtime for employees just to produce breakfast,\u201d said assistant general manager Rick Reynolds. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t make financial sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Employers around the country who thrive on seasonal business are preparing to lose thousands of foreign workers they\u2019ve hired in past summers to work in restaurants, hotels, landscaping and other industries. New visa controls are cutting the number of temporary foreign workers eligible to return to the country, so employers are scouring job fairs for replacements, lobbying Congress for help and bracing for staff shortages they say will make business tough.<\/p>\n
Tourism and hospitality officials envision various problems if the jobs go unfilled: Restaurants may have fewer tables and longer wait-times. Hotel check-in times could be delayed as fewer housekeepers hustle to clean rooms. Resorts may offer fewer meals to guests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will function, they will survive, they will be open\u2014they just won\u2019t thrive,\u201d warned Jane Nichols Bishop, a Cape Cod consultant who matches up foreign seasonal workers with businesses.<\/p>\n
The shortage hit winter ski resorts from Colorado to Vermont and is expected to affect summer hot spots like Newport, R.I., and Cape Cod, where businesses count on foreign workers to meet the tourist demand. Many seasonal workers have held the same job for years, and employers say they value their returning workers\u2019 experience and count on them to fill the critical, if unheralded, jobs that high school and college students typically aren\u2019t interested in.<\/p>\n
Foreign workers issued the visas, known as H-2B visas, are generally offered the same pay as an American worker would get for the same job, though the actual salary varies depending on the position and the location.<\/p>\n
Rick Farrick, who owns five inns in Newport, is looking for replacements for about a half-dozen Jamaican housekeepers, who earned $9 or $10 an hour. He said he was willing to offer more money to find quality local replacements, but said that wouldn\u2019t solve the problem of losing experienced workers who have worked for him for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone\u2019s been here for three years and he\u2019s done the same job for three years, you just tell them to go do it\u2014and they do it,\u201d Farrick said.<\/p>\n
The problem involves a shortage of H-2B visas, which are issued to foreign workers for temporary, nonagricultural jobs. The government caps the annual number of visas at 66,000.<\/p>\n
Until the fall, workers who had received an H-2B visa in one of three previous years could return for another year without being counted against the cap. Last year, with returning workers exempt from the quota, roughly 130,000 visas were issued.<\/p>\n
That changed when Congress, in a debate over comprehensive immigration reform, failed to renew the returning worker exemption. The provision expired Sept. 30.<\/p>\n
Now, lawmakers are weighing proposals to let returning workers come back. A House subcommittee heard testimony this month from H-2B employers about the need for more visas for seasonal workers, with some key lawmakers offering encouraging signs that they would support an extension.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is, the later we go, the less likely it will have an impact for this summer season,\u201d said Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat.<\/p>\n
The shortage provides an opening for local workers, especially with a slumping economy and a national unemployment rate of 5.1 percent in March. But Keith Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, said there\u2019s usually not enough local interest to meet the need.<\/p>\n
Still, a job fair in Hyannis, Mass., this month offering seasonal positions at resorts and restaurants drew scores of hopefuls, including Robert Buxton, 19, who was recently laid off from an electronics plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not leaping for joy now that these foreign workers aren\u2019t here,\u201d Buxton said. \u201cBut it\u2019s good for me. It stinks for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newport County is looking to replace around 500 H-2B employees this summer, Stokes said, while Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha\u2019s Vineyard usually have between 5,000 and 7,000 H-2B employees.<\/p>\n
Employers are looking into whether they can hire workers on visas other than the H-2B visas. Some are also bringing in foreign workers who are already in the country on an H-2B visa and are willing to extend their stays.<\/p>\n
Steven Filippi, president of Ballard\u2019s Inn, a resort on Block Island\u2014a popular vacation spot off Rhode Island\u2019s coast\u2014said he had found 20 to 30 H-2B workers in Florida and Arizona to replace the Filipino workers he used to hire as bartenders, chefs and servers.<\/p>\n
Many of those workers from last year were so confident they\u2019d come back that they left behind clothes and furniture.<\/p>\n
Other employers aren\u2019t sure what they\u2019ll do.<\/p>\n
Milton Kelley, general manager of Green Harbor Waterfront Lodging in Falmouth, said he hires just a few H-2B employees each year but expects the shortage to affect him indirectly because bigger businesses will draw from the same local pool he uses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe might have to close a certain part of the building\u2014whatever it takes to service the people, we\u2019ll do,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be out making beds\u2014the phones won\u2019t get answered.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Breakfast will not be served this summer at Cape Cod\u2019s Crown & Anchor. The Provincetown resort and entertainment complex usually hires 10 to 12 people from Jamaica and Eastern Europe each summer as cooks, housekeepers and maintenance workers. But new visa restrictions mean the guest workers it used last year aren\u2019t expected back. With fewer workers, the resort\u2019s management realized it wouldn\u2019t have the manpower to serve three meals a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}