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Increase of H-2B Visa is Key to America’s Economic Growth

Increase of H-2B Visa is Key to America’s Economic Growth

Groups call on Administration to release all available supplemental visas

 

(Arlington, VA) –  Today, Americans for Prosperity and The LIBRE Initiative sent a letter to Secretaries Alejandro Mayorkas,  Marty Walsh, and  Antony Blinken urging them to release all of the 64,000 additional H-2B visas, which allow employers facing hiring difficulties to recruit temporary non-agricultural workers, under the authority delegated to you by Congress. View the letter here. 

Read the letter here:

Dear Secretary Mayorkas, Secretary Walsh, and Secretary Blinken:

On behalf of Americans for Prosperity, The LIBRE Initiative, and our millions of activists across the country, we urge you to release all of the 64,000 additional H-2B visas, which allow employers facing hiring difficulties to recruit temporary non-agricultural workers, under the authority delegated to you by Congress for FY 2021.

After months of a steady recovery, U.S. employers added over 900,000 jobs in March alone, the fastest rate of monthly growth since last August. But even with this good news, thousands of businesses are at risk of being left behind as they struggle to find enough workers, and current plans to release just 22,000 of the additional visas are inadequate for meeting America’s labor needs.

In the first half of this fiscal year, employers had submitted 96,000 H-2B applications—exceeding the number of visas available by over 250 percent. Reports also show that during the 9 month long ban on temporary work visas, 93 percent of openings for H-2B positions went unfilled by American workers for fiscal year 2020—the highest on record despite being in the peak of the recession. Some of the businesses most heavily affected include those located in small towns and rural areas, where hiring options are already extremely limited.

Now, as the economy rebounds, businesses trying to get back on their feet will face even greater difficulty finding enough available workers to meet consumer demand. By filling these labor shortages and boosting local demand for goods and services, H-2B workers help create additional job openings for Americans. A report from the Government Accountability Office found that Americans who live in counties with H-2B employers are paid an average of $113 more in weekly wages and had lower unemployment than Americans in counties where the program was not used. Previous research has also found that for every additional 100 H-2B workers, 464 jobs are created for Americans.

Americans for Prosperity and The LIBRE Initiative urge you to take swift action and release all the supplemental H-2B visas available for FY 2021. We stand ready to work with you and Congress to develop durable legal immigration channels to better reflect our nation’s economic and national security needs.

We thank you for your attention to this matter.

View the letter here.

About Americans for Prosperity:

Americans for Prosperity engages in broad-based grassroots outreach to advocate for long-term solutions to the country’s biggest problems that prevent people from realizing their incredible potential — unsustainable government spending and debt, a broken immigration system, a rigged economy, and a host of other issues you can explore.

 

About The LIBRE Initiative:

LIBRE is dedicated to informing the U.S. Hispanic community about the benefits of a constitutionally limited government, property rights, rule of law, sound money supply and free enterprise through a variety of community events, research and policy initiatives that protect our free and open society.

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