All of these businesses start out by trying to hire college students and local residents as extra workers to cover this need. but they often find themselves shortstaffed. That has been the standard experience. and this program is designed to address thatthe temporary employees come from abroad to work for a few months and then return home. As an essential part of this program. the H2B program. this amendment my colleague offers today would simply extend for 3 years one of the very successful modifications to the H2B program that was adopted by the Senate by a vote of 94 to 6 a year ago this month. Those modifications left the H2B framework intact. They provided a fair and equitable means of distributing a scarce number of visas. It is importantand I wish to underscore this to my colleaguesto note that employers must demonstrate that they have tried and failed to find available. qualified U.S. citizens to fill seasonal jobs before they can file an H2B application. The amendment approved last year. which is carried forward by this extension. had three important aspects: First. it ensured that summer employers were not disadvantaged by allowing no more than 33.000or no more than halfof the 66.000 H2B -visas to be allocated in the first half of the year. Second. temporary workers who have lawfully participated in the H2B program in the previous 3 years were exempted from the annual numerical cap. Third. the modification required the employer to pay a fraud prevention and detection fee and increased sanctions for fraud. Senator MIKULSKI is seeking to carry these provisions forward. These visas are really for people who respect our laws and who work hard to provide services that benefit our economy and then return home to their families at the end of the season. All of that is an essential part of the program. This extension is a necessary adjustment for small and seasonal businesses that rely on temporary workers.
Keywords matched
visas H2B