The provision for a one-year fix to the H-2B non-immigrant visa program was not included in the $517 billion omnibus spending bill that passed the House Dec. 17 for the 2008 fiscal year.
Trade associations and H-2B employer groups said this legislation offered the best chance of passing the visa program’s one-year fix before the end of the calendar year. The Senate is expected to consider the bill today. Barring any major conflicts over Iraq war spending or a presidential veto, the appropriations bill with no H-2B fix is expected to pass, says Tom Delaney, PLANET's director of government affairs.
"While we would like to report otherwise, the reality is that H-2B relief may have to wait until next year," said PLANET CEO Tanya Tolpegin and Bob Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery & Landscape Association, in a joint statement released yesterday.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) expressed her disappointment that the House would not accept the one-year extension that allows returning workers to be exempt from the H-2B program's national cap of 66,000 workers. This provision was included in the version of the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill that passed in the Senate.
“This is not a new issue, not a new policy, not a new loophole and not a new cap,” Mikulski said in a statement. “We’re not breaking new ground here. We are simply trying to extend the guest-worker provision that has expired. Small and seasonal businesses and their workers are counting on us.”
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, made up of 24 Democratic members of the House of Representatives who are from Hispanic decent, objected to the H-2B fix and other so-called “immigration-related” measures, saying they want the issue dealt with only as a part of broader immigration legislation, according to an article on Congressional Quarterly’s Web site.