Lawn and landscape professionals are encouraged by their visits to members of Congress and their aides during a fly-in to Washington, D.C. Sept. 6. Contractors, along with members of other industries that use the H-2B guest worker program, headed to the nation’s capitol to urge their representatives to co-sponsor Senators Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and John Warner's (R-Va.) Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2007 (S. 988).
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Among those who flew in were more than 30 green industry representatives from Ohio who spent the day meeting with their representatives and staff members. The contractors and other advocates feel an urgency to get the cap exemption bill passed because Ohio is one of the top five states that uses the program. And, because of the state’s northern location, national cap of 66,000 people is nearly spent by the time Ohio’s landscaping and maintenance season starts, making the returning worker exemption even more important to them.
Chris Hayes of Groundmaster of Loveland, Ohio, has derived as much as 70 percent of his workforce from the H-2B program at times during his 10 years with the company. Among the representatives he visited was Marcy Kaptur, who was on board as a bill co-signer.
“I gauge today as a success,” he says.
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The bill provides a five-year extension for the returning worker provision that was included in similar legislation that originally passed in 2005. The current provision is set to expire on Sept. 30.
"Senator Warner and I are doing everything we can to make sure the exemption is passed before its expiration,” Mikulski said in a statement. “We are using every option available to move this as a stand alone bill or to attach it to another piece of legislation. I told small businesses they could count on me to keep fighting, and today they are bringing the fight to their elected representatives. Without these seasonal workers, many businesses would not survive - forced to limit services, lay off permanent U.S. workers or, worse yet, close their doors.”
Some members of Congress are reluctant to sign as co-sponsors of the bill because they fear it might make them appear to be soft on immigration, said Sandy Munley, executive director of the Ohio Landscape Association. But the advocates reached many representatives during the fly-in and tried to convince them that the bill was more of a small business matter than an immigration matter. In fact, the bill promotes border security, Munley told a representative’s staff member.
“They go through a stringent background check,” Munley said. “They make sure they only accept good people. When the workers come, they’re tied to a specific employer. When they leave, they have a certain number of days to cross back over the border.”
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Kurt Kluznik of Mentor, Ohio, employs about 85 H-2B employees out of a total of 275 Yardmaster employees. He stressed to representatives that the workers come to the U.S. without their families and don’t take up permanent residency here.
“To lump them in with illegals is not the correct way to do it,” he said. “As an industry, we support secure borders and regulating illegals.”
Munley encourages all who are concerned about the bill to stay in touch with their representatives and make them aware of the urgency of the Sept. 30 deadline.
The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but has not yet been considered for a vote. Several of the bill's sponsors, including Senators Mikulski, Warner, Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), have sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), urging the committee's consideration and vote following the August recess.