The National Hotel on Block Island got only five employees from other countries to work seasonally on H-2B visas this year. But next year, it might not get any.
There are only 66,000 H-2B visa workers granted to U.S. businesses nationwide per year, according to Frank Flanagan, an immigration lawyer for Sayer Regan Thayer & Flanagan in Newport, and a speaker at a Sept. 13 economic outlook breakfast on work force availability and immigration issues hosted by the Rhode Island Hospitality and Tourism Association.
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Those visas are divided into 33,000 for fall/winter seasonal business and 33,000 for spring/summer seasonal businesses, he said. But if the federal Save Our Small and Seasonal Business Act of 2005, set to expire Sept. 30, is not renewed, he said, the results could be disastrous for those Rhode Island businesses that rely on the program to boost their staff in the summer season and fringe months before and after.
The law guarantees the total will be split, which guarantees fall/winter seasonal businesses won’t be granted all of the H-2B workers, Flanagan said. The act also exempts from the 66,000 H-2B workers those who have worked for more than one year and up to three years in the program, thus tripling the number of H-2B workers in the United States at any given time.
If the law isn’t reauthorized, that would be a detriment to the National Hotel because “American workers don’t want to be housekeepers and dishwashers,” said Julie Fuller, general manager of the 120-year-old, 45-room hotel.
And often college students, another pool of seasonal workers, can’t start working in April, when the hotel starts preparing for summer guests, Fuller said. Plus they usually can’t stay until September because that’s when classes begin.
But the National Hotel isn’t alone in the predicament. Many businesses in Newport and Block Island are in the same bind if they lose the H-2B portion of their summer work force, Flanagan said.
Also discussed at the event were the new “no match” letters being sent out by the Social Security Administration as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Under the new system, if the Social Security number an employer gives for an employee comes up as a “no match” on the government end, the employer will get a letter and have 90 days to provide a correct number or dismiss the worker.
Failure to comply can result in fines ranging from $250 to $10,000. But the real challenge of the “no match” program, Flanagan said, is in the fact that often a business will receive a “no match” letter based on a clerical error or because of a name change as a result of marriage.
And though there is a U.S District Court-issued injunction on the “no match” program, several in the hospitality sector fear the worst if the program isn’t shut down entirely.
Judy Mackay, director of human resources for Gregg’s Restaurants, said she keeps getting conflicting information about the “no match” letters and how to properly verify the letter isn’t the result of a clerical error or name change issue.
Flanagan offered some advice. He said the best thing to do is to make a separate file for all Form I-9 employment eligibility verification forms and keep a log of every action taken by the employer upon receiving a “no match” letter if one is issued.
“Write down everything you’ve done,” he said.
That includes logging when the employer meets with the employee and what questions the employer asks in efforts to verify the employee’s information, Flanagan said.
“It’s not an automatic firing,” he said. “But it does take extra time for the employer to figure it out … It’s a burden on the small business person.”
To that end, Dale Venturini, president and CEO of RIHTA, announced that a group of about eight people are traveling to Washington, D.C., at the end of the month. She said the “no match” letter and H-2B visa issues will be on their minds.
And she encouraged those hospitality and tourism businesses affected by the issues to share their stories with the association before the delegation leaves.
The hospitality, tourism and leisure sector employed 55,252 workers, or one out of every eight private-sector employees in the sate, as of 2006, said Adelita Orefice, director of the R.I. Department of Labor and Training.
Employment in those industries is expected to rise to 64,000 by 2014, Orefice added.
“The problem with the hospitality industry is that you may have a lot of openings you’re not going to be able to fill,” said Jamie Martel, immigration lawyer at Sayer Regan Thayer & Flanagan. “Without programs like H-2B, this industry would find itself in an even shorter supply of workers.” •
