The newly-available 30,000 visas will be earmarked specifically for returning workers, meaning those who have previously used the visas to work in the United States.
The newly-available 30,000 visas will be earmarked specifically for returning workers, meaning those who have previously used the visas to work in the United States.
Several Island hotels are facing a labor shortage this summer due to changes in how seasonal work visas are distributed.
A cap on visas for workers from foreign countries has some Vineyard employers scrambling to fill jobs before the summer.
It’s that time of year when seasonal businesses are taking down the shutters and the summer workforce is beginning to arrive.
In recent years Eastern Europeans and Jamaicans have been filling a growing share of summer jobs. Foreign workers wait tables, greet guests, pour beers, make hotel beds, bake peanut brittle and fudge, serve lobster rolls and fry quesadillas. About 5,000 people come to the Island to work each year, according to a recent Martha’s Vineyard Commission report on housing needs.
For 10 years, Mark Luce, innkeeper at the Dockside Inn and Oak House, has employed the same seven-member Jamaican extended family to help run his business. But this year, they won’t be coming.
Darren Morris hires the drivers for the Martha’s Vineyard Transit Authority. Every year he hires 15 or 20 Bulgarian workers to drive buses. But this year, none.
Moves are afoot to use the economic stimulus package being planned by President Bush and Congress to deal with the national economic crisis, to also resolve an immigration problem which threatens to leave Island businesses without their usual supply of foreign seasonal workers.
Cong. William Delahunt is pushing the proposal to restore immigration provisions of the H2B visa scheme, which have expired as a result of the Congressional gridlock over immigration law.
