The H-2B Visa

[David Cressey]

Yesterday, I head a news article on TV about how the tourism industry on Cape Cod is facing a crisis.  The crisis is that the quota has already been filled for the year for H-2B visas.

According to the speaker,  a spokeswoman for the hospitality industry,  the quota for H-2B visas is only 62,000  and it's already exhausted by January.  Unless the industry can get the quota increased,  she said,  the tourism industry in Cape Cod might be faced with cutting the season short, or trimming back in other ways.

People with H-2B visas are guest workers that perform services that help the hospitality industry keep going.  She didn't say exactly what those skills were,  but I presume they were things like making beds, cleaning hotel rooms,  and serving restaurant meals.  You know,  the sorts of skills you just can't hire Americans to do.

I wonder how long it's going to be before the entire US workforce is made up of guest workers.  First computer programmers and farmhands,  then tourist trades,  next hospital orderlies and nurses,  truck drivers, bus drivers, cab drivers,  auto workers, coal miners.  There's no shortage of "worker shortages".

[The Original Dinosaur]

This is a perennial story in the ski resort areas in Colorado.  Somehow, between wetbacks and college students, they always seem to make it through another season.  Of course, room rates, lift tickets, etc. will cost a bit more.

[TRexx]

We see the same thing at the Jersey Shore.  For decades most of the people who worked on the boardwalk were college or high school kids. Then the owners found out they could hire folks from off shore (mostly Eastern Europe). The pay was more or less the same (many of those jobs include room & board) but someone from Russia or Poland is less likely to quit and go home, or take a better job at the motel across the street.

[David Cressey]

If H-2B works like H-1B, there is a reason why they are less likely to quit and take a different job.  If their current employer finds out before the new employer sponsors the visa,  the current employer can have the guest worker deported.

There are many flaws with the guest worker program, but this is the big one.  This is the one that causes guest workers to work at below (US) market rates.  

[The Original Dinosaur]

Quote:If H-2B works like H-1B, there is a reason why they are less likely to quit and take a different job.

Bingo!

All work visa programs amount to indenture.  That's the big draw for employers.  Union-busting, cheap, docile workers.

[TRexx]

Quote:All work visa programs amount to indenture. That's the big draw for employers. Union-busting, cheap, docile workers.

Exactly. There are similarities between a guest worker, an indentured servant and a slave. None are allowed to leave their position and seek better compensation and working conditions.

I saw an interesting PBS series on Slavery in America last week. One of the points they made was that the elimination of slavery in the North wasn't as much a moral decision as a financial one. The newly arrived immigrants from Europe didn't want to compete with slave labor.  They knew that an exploitable work force reduces wages for all.

[The Gorn]

It's interesting to me how the guest workers, especially the "smart" ones, turn it around as though it's OK with them and it's our moral obligation to support their presence.

Witness our friend the H1B who posted here in another section about finding a "good" H1B sponsoring agency. He is only here, as he claimed, because he's irreplaceable.

He couldn't manage to connect the dots that he's got his current position because he's a form of indentured labor. His ego was in the way. Well, he's probably being told the flip side of the standard bullshit that we all are, but because it's in his favor currently, he accepts it.

I hope China out-cheaps India, and soon. Spread the love.

[pm4hire]

[TRexx]

Employers favor people they can control and exploit over those that they can't.