Dan's Papers - April 4, 2008 - Coping with a Clampdown On Foreign Workers

For years, restaurants, hotels and motels, landscapers and gardening companies on the East End have depended on seasonal foreign employees to make up their workforce during the busy summer months.

But this year, the H2B Visa Workers Program that supplies them with certain numbers of legal foreign service help will provide only a small number, as the quotas have dropped. As a result, many businesses will be forced to open a little later, and maybe close a little sooner. And many of them have already searched out replacement workers from other programs.

"We're all having to cope with the decreased numbers of H2B Visa workers, so at Gurney's we have brought in lots of European students through a student Visa program," said Paul Monte, General Manager of Gurney's Inn Resort & Spa in Montauk. "We're bringing in students this year from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Argentina and the Philippines. We are also trying to get students from Niagara University and from schools in Florida."

Roberta Gosman, who has traditionally hired students from Ireland to work at Gosman's Restaurant, recruited staff members from Czechoslovakia and other European countries.

Donald Torr, owner of The Crow's Nest Restaurant in Montauk, said he is still scrambling to find service help for this upcoming season. "A handful of our H2B workers were not able to return, and we're still looking to find dishwashers, maids and wait staff," he said. "It just gets harder as time goes on, and it also drives up the prices."

Jim Grimes, owner of the landscaping company Fort Pond Native Plants, said, "It's a bit of a dilemma, trying to fill in the gaps created by these workers who are not returning." He explained that many landscapers needed these workers early in the spring and were unable to get them. "We've had workers from the original H2B Visa Program who by now have gotten green cards, and this year we only had about eight slots to fill," he said. "Is it killing us? No. But it's making our lives more difficult."

Laraine Creegan, Executive Director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, has been meeting with local business owners, and suggesting they seek help from U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Many local businesses are caught up in a Congressional standoff over an immigration overhaul, which could cost companies billions in lost business. For about the last 20 years, the H2B Visa Workers Program has allowed people from other countries to come to the U.S. to work for up to eight months for specified employers, and then return to their country of origin.

Since its inception, this program has authorized 66,000 workers to enter the U.S. annually. In 2005-2006, an exemption was given for returning workers that allowed them to be exempted from the 66,000, allowing more workers in the program. This exemption was further granted in 2006, allowing about 75,000 more returning workers so the total was 150,000. But that expired in 2007.

"At this point, the original 66,000 cap is all that's being allowed for 2008, and that cap was reached on January 2," said Monte, who last year employed 90 legal foreign workers out of a seasonal staff of 325 at Gurney's.

Adam Miller, an attorney in Bridgehampton, said because so many of his real estate development, landscaping and other clients had these similar immigration problems, he hired an attorney who specializes in these issues. Millicent Clarke, who has practiced immigration law for 25 years, and who served with the former Immigration Naturalization Service (INS), now called the Department of Homeland Security ICE, joined his firm in December. She practices in Valley Stream and also works out of Adam Miller Group in Bridgehampton to help clients here.

"Over the years there has always been a quota of 66,000 for the entire country, but they'd say returning workers don't have to be counted in the quota. Now, all of a sudden these people are being counted in the quota, so there are less Visas available," explained Clarke. "I thought by now they would have done something about it, because we're in a recession, so why make it worse than it is? It's also an attack on the economy, which businesses were trying to run in an efficient way with legal immigration."

Clarke advised people to put pressure on the State department and on senators and congressmen. "Many people think there is nothing they can do, but I tell them that writing letters and making phone calls will help," she said.

Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman has been trying to bring back these summer workers to the East End. But he said so far this year the quota has been used up by the winter ski resorts.

In previous years, the 66,000 cap was split between the summer and winter resorts, and the returning workers came in over and above this number. But this year, with no exemption for returning workers, the 66,000 allowable workers were granted on a first come, first served basis, and the ski resorts grabbed them first.

"We were hoping that Congress and the Senate would act quickly to pass this exemption so that this void of returning workers could be filled," said Schneiderman. "Now we don't know if it will happen."