New Temporary Worker Visa Procedures to Cut Bureaucracy
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With restaurants and resorts facing summer staff shortages, the Bush administration will announce federal regulations today to streamline the way foreign workers enter the country for seasonal jobs.
The Department of Labor is rewriting rules to help employers find and hire workers for temporary jobs as landscapers, waitresses and crab pickers more quickly and efficiently than current guidelines allow.
In one major change affecting industries such as construction and shipyards, the definition of “temporary” will be drastically expanded—from the current 10 months to three years.
Adjusting the so-called H2B visa program is part of an ongoing administration effort to reconfigure immigration laws on a piecemeal basis in the absence of a comprehensive overhaul.
{snip}
There are limits, however, to the administration’s ability to change the seasonal visa program, especially in one crucial area: the number of visas available.
Employers consider the 66,000 new visas offered every year to be woefully inadequate, and efforts to expand the H2B visa program have been stymied in Congress. So federal officials hope that by smoothing out the procedures, some of the difficulties businesses are having in filling jobs with foreign workers will be eased.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in an interview with The Times that the changes being announced today would cut down bureaucratic delays.
{snip}
The new rules also are meant to protect American workers, she said. Foreign workers will have to reapply annually and labor markets will be tested yearly to ensure there are no able and available U.S. workers for the jobs, Chao explained.
{snip}
“The administration is trying in the only way it can to respond to business pressure,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He argued that if employers paid high enough wages, Americans would take these jobs.
“Why do we even have such a program?” Krikorian asked. “Employers are never satisfied with how cheap labor is.”
{snip}
The Department of Labor is proposing to speed the visa process by allowing employers to file applications directly to the federal government, cutting a current requirement that applications first go to a state workforce agency. Employers no longer will have to fill out paperwork showing that they have complied fully with program requirements. Instead they will be able to attest, under threat of penalties and fines, that they are complying.
Companies would be barred from passing on any program expenses to workers, including recruitment costs or attorney’s fees. Labor officials will begin an auditing program to make sure employers are following the rules; those who don’t face fines of as much as $10,000.
{snip}
Email Nicole Gaouette at nicole.gaouette@latimes.com.
(Posted on May 22, 2008)
Comments
“cutting a current requirement that applications first go to a state workforce agency. Employers no longer will have to fill out paperwork showing that they have complied fully with program requirements. Instead they will be able to attest, under threat of penalties and fines, that they are complying.”
So they can bypass the state unemployment office (and unemployed Americans), and go straight to Washington for their imported slaves. No paperwork required? Doesn’t matter whether they call themselves ‘employers’ or ‘employees’, criminals have never had a problem with lying. And the feds will never penalize or fine an employer. Never. They can take that guarantee to the bank.
“Employers consider the 66,000 new visas offered every year to be woefully inadequate, and efforts to expand the H2B visa program have been stymied in Congress.”
They might solve that problem if they spent the money on their employees instead of their lawyers and lobbyists.
“Why do we even have such a program?” Krikorian asked. “Employers are never satisfied with how cheap labor is.”
Bingo.
Posted by Edward at 6:56 PM on May 22
The U.S. government, packed to the gills with gangsters and prostitutes, continues to stomp the American working class in the face with a hob-nailed boot. It is quite infuriating to realize that the bulk of the group that is losing the most - socially, politically, economically - apparently has no real concept of what the problem is. Or even worse, no resolve to do anything about it. This is just my opinion, but if the true knowledge of the level of their dispossession was revealed, the events that culminated with the end of the Ceaucescu regime in Romania a couple of decades ago would look like Sesame Street.
Posted by Feliks Dzerzhinsky at 10:45 PM on May 22
Agree with Edward. Employers are never satisfied with current wages when they can hire another for less. It is done all the time! Unions were created because of such practices.
I observe ordinary corps firing employees just to keep min wage at desired levels. The entire immigration process needs a long rest. Maybe 5 - 10 years! V
Posted by at 2:42 AM on May 23
Can anyone be more specific about the 3 year limit please?
I mean, when the 3 years are up, uh..well what happens? I
mean, the part about returning the workers home?
Signed
An Anonymous, Not Well Connected Citizen
Posted by at 5:27 PM on May 23
What GUARANTEE do we Americans have of those ‘temporary’ jobs being only temporary? Our bureaucracy appears to be uninterested or incapable of locating people who overstay their visas. Like those purported 911 airliner hijackers, for example!
Anyone care to guess how many of those ‘guest workers’ won’t be busy raising their families here at taxpayer expense before long? Or drop their seasonal jobs for something far more lucrative or less labor intensive?
Or that a year later, an radical expansion of the number of visas will again be needed? Ditto for the year after that.
I guess Traitor Bush could care less about the incalculable harm he has and is doing to the American citizens. Come to think of it, that callous indifference is certainly echoed by those greedy businesses — who would rather dump another few million unwanted immigrants on our people, as opposed to paying a fair wage and hiring American workers. Has anybody noticed a DROP in the cost of those resort hotels and restaurants… thanks to the cheap immigrant labor? Just FATTER PROFITS for the owners, higher wages for the overpaid honchos, I suppose.
If we need to import MORE seasonal workers, why, pray tell, are there so many parking lot/street corner assembly points in every city and town… where immigrants loiter around hoping to land a few days’ work? Can anyone explain this apparent lack of logic to me? Or, for that matter, why communities have to go thru the expense of setting up hiring centers, at taxpayer expense, of course, so these ‘fine people coming to do jobs we supposedly won’t do’ can watch TV, get a free snack, a shower, a change of clothes… paid for in the end by our tax money.
Take a ride around YOUR town. Count the number of Hispanics and Mexicans standing around waiting for a day’s hire. Then EXPLAIN why we need to import a few million more immigrants!
Posted by Fed Up at 7:53 PM on May 24
Here, in the former Czechoslovakia, “temporary” means 20-21 years. The Soviet troops, that were stationed in my country since the invasion in 1968, were also said to be there “temporarily”. They left in 1989.
Posted by EW at 5:30 AM on May 26