With Record Low Unemployment, South Dakota’s Workforce Needs H-2B Visa Workers
By U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.)
The national unemployment rate is at the lowest levels since 1969. In South Dakota, we have an unemployment rate of 2.9 percent, which is one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. This is certainly something to be celebrated, but it also means our industries that rely on seasonal and temporary work have to seek outside workers when necessary. This is especially true for the tourism and construction industries, which will be seeking extra help from the springtime to early fall.
One important tool available to them is the H-2B visa program, which has not adequately provided the necessary workers and certainty to our employers in recent years. The H-2B visa program allows employers to hire foreign workers for short-term jobs for specific periods of time before the workers then return back to their home country. I have been working in the Senate to provide a long-term fix to the H-2B visa program, including increasing the number of H-2B visas available each year to meet our growing workforce needs. In the March 2018 funding bill, we included a path forward for the administration to increase visas by 69,000 for 2018. The administration ultimately decided to allow an additional 15,000 H-2B visa workers for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2018. While we welcomed the increase, it was too little, too late for our state’s businesses who need workers for the busy summer tourism and construction seasons. A long-term solution is necessary.
A criticism we sometimes hear about the H-2B program is that the workers are not thoroughly vetted and overstay their visas. This is not the case. While there is certainly room for improvement in our immigration system, the H-2B visa program is one of the most effective programs available. The migrant workers are among the least likely to overstay their visas each year. We also sometimes hear concerns that the H-2B visa program takes jobs away from Americans and gives them to foreign workers. This is simply not the case. Employers can only apply to hire H-2B visa workers if they are unable to find American workers to fill open jobs. Additionally, the jobs that H-2B visa workers are hired for are often seen as undesirable by American workers because they are short-term or temporary jobs. Our office hears from South Dakota businesses all the time who are struggling to find employees to hire. For these businesses, being able to hire a few H-2B visa workers each year is a matter of staying open or facing the prospect of closing down.
As jobs are created and our economy grows, we must utilize highly effective programs such as the H-2B visa program if we are to ever fully reach our economic potential. Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law in December 2017, growth in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has averaged 3.3 percent over the last three quarters and almost 2.3 million new jobs have been created as of December 2018. The high number of new jobs coupled with the low unemployment rate means we have a workforce shortage. H-2B visa workers can fill these jobs to keep our economy strong.
I recently joined a bipartisan group of senators to send a letter to congressional leadership urging them to provide a long-term solution for the H-2B visa program in any government funding bill agreed upon to end the partial government shutdown. Recent filings show the statutory cap of 66,000 H-2B visas, set decades ago, is inadequate to meet the demands of today’s seasonal businesses. On Jan. 1, 2019, the Department of Labor’s iCERT system—where employers seeking H-2B visa workers request temporary labor certifications—crashed due to the record high number of requests. Before the crash, iCERT received more than 97,000 applications for the 33,000 available visas for the second half of the fiscal year.
South Dakota’s workforce is dependent on temporary, H-2B visa workers to fill important short-term, seasonal jobs each year. It is clear that we need a permanent solution that raises the cap of H-2B visas available to employers each year based on need rather than an arbitrary number. I am committed to working with my colleagues in Congress, as well as the administration, to find a real solution to this issue so our local businesses can thrive.
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H-2B suppresses local wages.
Makes sense. If illegal immigration suppresses local wages, why would this visa not do the same? I think the real problem is locals do not want to do certain jobs for the wage offered. So businesses look elsewhere and ask to have foreign workers take the jobs.
In my experience, that’s rarely the case. There are PLENTY of US citizens and SD residents willing to work these jobs at the wages offered. People are shocked when I show them the evidence: stacks of rejected applications. Why won’t US companies hire US citizens? Lots of reasons. One is criminal history. Let’s say you have a US citizen who, 10 years ago, pleaded guilty to a felony DWI & marijuana possession. She served one year. Now, she’s 30, married, with kids. Meanwhile, you have a 20-year-old immigrant from Guatemala whose arms are covered in gang tattoos. We don’t know his criminal history. We can’t access his file: there’s no handy website to check. And, even if we could, the file is probably blank. There’s no budget for bureaucrats to meticulously update criminal records on every gangster in Guatemala. Tragically, the employer’s insurance requirements often block the US citizen from being hired but permit the Guatemalan to be hired. It would be discriminatory for an employer to assume an individual has a criminal history absent official, verified documentation. Hiring non-citizens allows companies to dodge a host of onerous employment regulations and insurance requirements. With less immigration, we’d have a tighter workforce and (therefore) greater public pressure to fix these rules. Mass immigration expands the workforce & eases the pressure, allowing bad rules to remain. Tragically, in the name of safety, some school districts nationwide are forbidden to hire felons, even non-violent felons, so the schools end up hiring foreign workers… who turn out to be far more dangerous.
Except multiple studies show that while immigrant populations have been increasing over the past decades, crime has been decreasing. For example:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15377938.2016.1261057
So, even if this hypothetical tattooed monster of a human being from Guatemala does exist, he and his fellow terrifying gangbangers who we can’t find the lengthy criminal records for don’t seem to be leading to higher crime rates here in the US. Your story doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Let businesses pay the wage the local market demands.
If by “businesses” you mean large livestock, poultry, and dairy operations, then yes. Problem is that these ag groups are heavily dependent on undocumented labor, so work visas mean very little. That’s the dirty little secret that Rounds, Noem and many Republicans don’t want to talk about. Build that wall, but let me keep the workers I need to keep the farm running!
Back in the 70s I was living in Vermont and knew somebody drawing unemployment benefits and she was indignant when she received a notice telling her to report for apple picking.
The apples needed to be picked and they had a shortage of migrant workers to pick them.
I thought it was great.
EVIL GOVERNMENT
I agree. Once everybody on welfare (health permitting) and unemployment is working, then we may have room for some H-2B. Until then, why pay those folks to do nothing and then pay somebody else do do something?
And that folks is how we get a majority of illegal immigrants into our country. It makes no sense to build a wall if we are going to let employers import in cheap laborers that keep wages low.
Three different topics. A wall for the bulk of illegals, reforms of legal immigration and get serious penalties against employers. Rounds is serving a select constituency vs the whole.
Rounds is establishment and is part of the problem and when he opens his mouth to equivoquate, he sounds and acts like a Democrat. Lips moving.
The bulk of illegals? The bulk, or roughly 70% got here with H1B and Student Visas. What makes you think anything will be done to employers when Trump pardoned one of the biggest offenders in our country’s history?
Dusty Johnson, bought and paid for by corporate interests.
Anonymous 3:18,
You are incorrect. It is estimated 52-56% (varies annually in this range) of illegal immigrants in the U.S. entered by illegally crossing our border with Mexico. Roughly 35-40% are from expired visitor/tourist/student visas. Of the work visas (h1b etc), most are inadvertent expirations often either extended or the person returns to their home country.
Regarding the employers, we do need to address this issue at the same time we do the other three legs of the problem:
1). Southern border security.
2). Who is approved for immigration (merit).
3). DACA/Dreamers/Refugees.
While the skills gap is a serious problem in South Dakota, and working with youth is one solution, I am disappointed that there isn’t any apparent effort to reinvest in the existing workforce with training and educational opportunities across the age spectrum of the workforce. Focusing just on youth misses a significant part of the population.
We can start by teaching college graduates how to milk cows so they can pay off their student loans.