The Biden administration has announced plans to add 20,000 H-2B temporary visas for winter hiring to meet employer demands, but organized labor has “raised alarms” that those programs will undermine U.S.-born workers, Bloomberg Law reported Wednesday.
The visas will be set aside for U.S. employers seeking to employ additional workers on or before March 31. Under the H-2B program, employment must be for a limited period of time, such as a one-time occurrence, seasonal need or intermittent need, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“At a time of record job growth, additional H-2B visas will help to fuel our nation’s historic economic recovery,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. In the coming months, he added, the DHS will seek to implement policies to make the H-2B program “even more responsive to the needs of our economy, while protecting the rights of both U.S. and noncitizen workers.”
Critics, however, claim that the H-2B visa program should be “fixed” rather than expanded.
According to Bloomberg, Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said that “employers have misused the H-2B program to lower wages, discriminate against and exploit both U.S. and foreign workers.”
