Fixing a Broken System: How New Immigration Policy Would Affect the Cape
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 – When restaurant owner Felis Barreiro questions a foreign worker about suspect documentation, the worker usually vanishes the next day. Barreiro, like many Cape Cod employers, is left to question the validity of the country’s current immigration system.
“I’d be very in favor of a [new] guest worker program,” said Barreiro, owner of Alberto’s restaurant in Hyannis. “We need proper papers so there’s nothing down the road to come back to haunt us.”
In the coming weeks Cape employers will begin the often tedious and paper-drenched process of filing to bring immigrant workers into the country for the 2006 tourist season.
With large numbers of foreign workers, legal and illegal, already in the country, confusion on the part of the government and employer often leads to misconception in the general public.
Immigration reform in general has long been a touchy subject in the United States, but the migrant worker policy itself forces workers to seek help, employers to seek clarity, and politicians to try to appease everyone.
“It’s a very touchy subject,” said Barreiro.
While Barreiro is plowing through paperwork, several immigration reform bills are working through Congress, the most popular of which was introduced in May by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Their bipartisan Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was touted as comprehensive immigration reform that addresses border security, access to health care and a new worker visa program. The McCain-Kennedy bill was simultaneously introduced in the House by Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., and others.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., introduced their own comprehensive immigration reform bill in July. The Cornyn-Kyl bill has a temporary worker component that allows workers in the country for two years, requiring them to return to their home country for one year before applying to the program again. It also would require illegal workers already in the United States to leave the country before they are able to get in the pipeline for
permanent residency.
Last month Kyl joined President Bush in Arizona at a border issues briefing. Bush supports the position that guest workers, legal and illegal, should return home after their time here expires, according to a release from Kyl’s office.
Melissa Wagoner, Kennedy’s press secretary, said Judiciary Committee hearings on the McCain-Kennedy bill should begin at the conclusion of the committee’s hearings on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, which are scheduled to start Jan. 9.
“We’re obviously anxious for this to become a reality,” Wagoner said.
Kennedy met with Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern on Dec. 1 to discuss the immigration policy, among other things. According to Kennedy’s office there are up to 50,000 Irish in the United States who could benefit from immigration reform. In October the Irish Parliament endorsed the McCain-Kennedy bill. Mexican President Vicente Fox also has endorsed the proposal.
Besides foreign governments, the McCain-Kennedy bill has received widespread support via editorials and established organizations.
In October McCain and Kennedy laid out their proposal in front of economists and business owners at the supportive U.S. Chamber of Commerce immigration conference in Washington.
“We could really do something that is really in our national interest in the interest of our national heritage,” Kennedy said at the conference.
The McCain-Kennedy bill seeks to tighten border security and was explained as a national security matter by both senators.
According to McCain, border enforcement funding has tripled and the number of agents patrolling the borders has doubled but illegal immigration has doubled as well.
“There is a demand and there is a supply,” McCain said in October of immigrants. “When people can’t feed themselves and their families where they are, they’ll go some place where they can.”
Those immigrants who arrive on Cape Cod are the intended beneficiaries of a key aspect of the McCain-Kennedy bill: a new worker visa program that addresses legal and illegal immigrants. This section would immediately and significantly impact the hidden backbone of the Cape’s workforce.
According to the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, the Cape increases its workforce seasonally by 25 percent: Year round the Cape has a stable workforce of around 100,000 but during the tourist season that jumps to around 125,000. In the past decade between five and six thousand of those additional workers come from overseas.
“We have become very dependent on immigrant labor for seasonal time frames,” said Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber.
The majority of positions being filled by these workers are considered unskilled. This commonly means jobs in the hospitality and service industry, such as hotel workers or landscapers. These jobs must first be offered to American workers, but if they go unfilled, the employer can seek international help.
Currently there are several routes Cape employers take to bring workers to their businesses. One of the most common is the H-2B worker visa. The H-2B allows workers to be in the country for nine months, although they can extend it for another 9 months. Many workers will spend winters working at ski resorts and then move south.
Historically, the Cape relies on the H-2B program more than most other regions of the country, according to Northcross.
She said there is a burgeoning Brazilian population on the Cape and many of the seasonal workers are from Jamaica or Eastern Europe. According to immigration attorney Matt Lee, there are already three to five thousand Brazilians on the Cape working illegally.
“H-2B is a system that doesn’t work,” said Lee, who is on the Cape Cod Chamber’s board of directors and workforce development committee.
Perhaps the most irritating aspect for employers, besides the laborious application process, is what the current program does not address: After a worker’s time expires he or she must leave the U.S. and return to their home country. Many people involved with the issue feel this is part of what begins, and perpetuates, the illegality of many migrant workers.
Many Americans traditionally have trouble swallowing anything involving immigrant workers because they automatically associate the issue with jobs being taken away from Americans.
“People think they steal American jobs. They don’t steal American jobs; they’re here because they already got a job,” Lee said. “I can understand the animosity towards immigration, but it’s truly unfounded if you look at it from a macroeconomic level.”
To this end, immigration policy has become a thorny issue for politicians trying to balance demands from opposing views.
“Our proposal helps fill a mismatch between the kinds of jobs created and the kinds of workers available in the U.S.” Kennedy said. “Our society is aging. As baby boomers retire, they require more services. Their kids want to go to college, not work in the fields, factories, or the services sector. And more than half the new jobs being created in our economy require hard work but little formal degrees.”
In some cases, views on immigration policy are rife with misconception. There is the argument that college students, home for the summer, would quickly snatch up these positions.
However, as Barreiro noted, college workers usually do not completely fulfill an employer’s needs. Because the students arrive in May or June and leave the end of August, they miss several months at the start and close of the tourist season, leaving many Cape employers understaffed for a large chunk of what could be a very profitable time.
“I don’t think people look at it economically and rationally,” Lee said. “They look at it from their gut like, ‘I’m not losing my job to a damn foreigner.’”
Protecting American workers is a part of the H-2B program. Employers must exhaust all American options for employees before opening the position to international workers, a stipulation the McCain-Kennedy bill retained.
Their bill proposes a new H-5A visa to complement the H-2B program. Employers and potential employees would go through a similar process but with key differences: Potential workers must prove they have a job, get health and security risk clearance and pay application fees.
“The guest worker visa [proposal] is terrific for the country and it’s terrific for the Cape because it addresses the biggest problem in America today, which is a critical labor shortage in the service industry,” Lee said.
The new visa, for jobs requiring little or no skill, would last for three years and would be renewable for another three years. After the sixth year the worker could stay in the United States if he or she is in the pipeline to obtain permanent residency. Whereas the cap for the amount of H-2Bs that can be given out is somewhere around 60,000, according to Northcross, there would be 400,000 H-5As distributed at the outset under the McCain-Kennedy bill. Each year that cap would fluctuate depending on demand.
“We need to do more to help immigrants enter the United States legally and help American businesses that need the manpower immigrant workers are looking to give,” Kennedy said.
The McCain-Kennedy bill also provides for undocumented workers already in the country, an issue Barreiro describes as major.
He said many immigrants, mostly illegal, move around constantly because they are afraid of being caught by the government. When an inquiry comes in about a Social Security number that does not match up with the national database, Barreiro calls in the worker in question, asking for verification. On numerous occasions the worker claims to have the information at home but does not return to work the next day. Barreiro would like to see workers keep their jobs so he can provide more extensive training and give them the opportunity to move up in his company.
“You invest money in these people and you train them and before you know it they’re gone then you have to start all over again,” Barreiro said. He emphasized he is one of many employers facing this problem.
The McCain-Kennedy bill allows immigrants already in the U.S. without documentation, most likely illegally, to register for the temporary visa and get into the pipeline for permanent residency. They must prove they will be working, pass security checks and pay substantial fines and back taxes.
But opponents say this policy amounts to amnesty.
“The Kennedy-McCain bill doesn’t lean toward amnesty. It is an amnesty,” said John Vinson, editor at Americans for Immigration Control, in an E-mail. “It rewards people who have broken our laws and invites others to do the same.”
Vinson said the fine is merely a slap on the wrist and makes American citizenship a bargain-priced commodity.
Kennedy said his bill is not offering a free pass or a trip to the front of the line. “We support proposals that provide an opportunity for undocumented immigrants who are already working in our communities and contributing to our nation to come forward . . . and obtain a temporary visa that could lead to permanent residency, over time,” he said.
For Lee, the most controversial part of this is what to do with the 10 to 15 million workers in the country illegally filling jobs. The McCain-Kennedy proposal for him is not offering amnesty but, rather, forces illegal workers to find an employer and register with the government.
Lee, and others, say making an immigration policy palatable for the American public is the biggest difficulty facing politicians. But, he says, if you asked each hospitality business on Cape Cod, the majority would support keeping workers here for an extended period of time.
“If we can make them legal, documented, tax-paying citizens,” Northcross said, “that would be a good thing for our country.”
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