Senate Offers Help for H2B Employers

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) sponsored legislation approved in April that gives businesses greater access to ?EUR??,,????'??guest workers?EUR??,,????'?? to meet their labor shortages.

The H-2B program has limited access to temporary seasonal foreign labor by capping visas at 66,000. Small businesses, including landscape companies, have long been lobbying to get more foreign workers to fill their labor shortages. Now they have some good news.

The U.S. Senate passed the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act April 19 on a 94 to 6 vote. Sponsored by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the bill exempts workers who had participated in the H-2B program over the past three years from being counted toward the cap for the next two years, allowing employers access to theses trained workers to meet their seasonal needs.

Senator Mikulski noted that the national cap of H2B visas was reached so early in the year that many of the businesses in her home state of Maryland were not allowed to apply.

John Meredith, director of legislative relations for the American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA), said the bill's passage was a ?EUR??,,????'??testimony to the power of a unified small business community.?EUR??,,????'?? The H-2B Workforce Coalition, co-chaired by the ANLA and the National Restaurant Association, is the business group that coordinated support for the legislation.

As with so many pieces of legislation, the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act was attached to a larger bill, in this case an amendment to the Iraq-Afghanistan appropriations bill.