King, Pingree lead bipartisan call for more seasonal worker visas

U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine 1st District, are leading a bipartisan call for admitting more foreign workers to fill seasonal job openings this year.

In a bipartisan letter signed by 189 members of Congress including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District, they lay out their concerns to Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The letter urges the Trump administration to increase the statutory cap of H-2B visas in the current fiscal year.

King and Pingree note in the letter that many business sectors — including tourism and hospitality, seafood processing, golf courses, fairs and carnivals — continue to struggle with seasonal labor shortages that are aggravated by the administration's cap on the visas.

"Given the continued low unemployment and growing demand for H-2B workers, as evidenced by the recent number of applications for the second half of the fiscal year, we urge the Department to promptly make available all 64,716 additional visas authorized under the law as soon as possible," they write. "These vital American businesses depend on the expeditious release of a sufficient number of additional visas."

They estimate that between 18,000 and 25,000 needed H-2B worker positions will remain vacant without the immediate release of additional visas as a result of the visa cap already reached last Nov. 15. That's almost a month earlier than previous years.

"As a result, we urge DHS to release the maximum number of additional visas without delay," they write.

Employers are required by law to first make a concerted effort to hire American workers to fill open visas. But the letter notes that H-2B visas fill needs for small businesses, when there aren't enough able and willing American workers to fill the temporary, seasonal positions.

The latest demand comes a month after Collins and King co-led a similar bipartisan letter signed by 12 senators urging the administration to increase the existing 66,000 H-2B visa cap to the maximum allowable by law.