H-2B Workforce Coalition releases survey results Email
Monday, June 19, 2017 02:00 AM

 

H-2B updateThanks very much to everyone who took the time to respond to the H-2B Workforce Coalition survey on the impact of the H-2B cap on seasonal businesses. The message below was just sent to DHS. Please continue your outreach to and tweets at DHS:

On behalf of the H-2B Workforce Coalition, we appreciate DHS holding the May 25 H-2B listening session on H-2B visas.  During the listening session, DHS heard from many small and seasonal businesses that the lack of H-2B workers is causing direct harm to their companies and their American workers. These impacts were confirmed in a June 2017 H-2B Workforce Coalition survey of 715 seasonal businesses in 45 states. The survey found that:

  • 72.86% of businesses surveyed said that the lack of H-2B workers is hurting their business financially.
  • 73.3% of businesses surveyed said that the lack of H-2B employees is forcing them to scale back on the amount of goods and services they offer or the quality of those goods or services.
  • 18.32% of businesses surveyed said that the lack of H-2B workers has forced them to lay off American workers.
  • 62.22% of businesses surveyed reported that the lack of H-2B workers has caused harm to their company’s reputation or customer relationships.

The complete survey is attached , along with summary charts showing the figures outlined above and testimonials describing the specific harm to individual businesses.

The pain caused by lack of H-2B workers continues to mount with every day that DHS fails to raise the H-2B cap and resume H-2B processing as is authorized under the Fiscal 2017 Consolidated Appropriations Act. We hope that DHS will move swiftly to resume H-2B processing. DOL issued foreign labor certifications clearly demonstrate that the temporary positions being sought by small and seasonal businesses could not be filled by American workers, despite intensive recruitment efforts, and that the hiring of H-2B workers would not negatively impact American workers. In fact, an American Enterprise Institute survey found that every H-2B worker sustains 4.64 American jobs.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue for small and seasonal businesses nationwide.