Immigration impasse borders on crisis: dependent on guest workers, restaurateurs urge Congress to end inaction

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 13, 2008 by Ron Ruggless

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H1-Bs are nonimmigrant visas that allow employers to hire foreign guest workers in specialty occupations.

"It's really severely unequal treatment," he says. "The small businesses are being victimized by a system that people in Congress are afraid to reform."

The H1-B visas are for highly skilled, highly educated workers, Chapman says.

"We have people like Microsoft bringing people on a temporary work visa," he says, "and in the noncollege-degree area our system expressly forbids an employer from getting a temporary work visa for that type of worker.

"So many people are here without documentation. Economically, we need those workers. We need some number of them. Our immigration system says you cannot have one of those so-called 'essential' workers. You can't bring workers in to fill jobs on a temporary basis if they don't have a college degree."

That leads to hundreds of thousands of "lawbreakers and accusations that they are taking our jobs, they are destroying our culture, and they are overwhelming our emergency rooms," he adds.

Chapman says that all of those complaints are symptoms of a more basic, underlying problem.

"This is a train wreck that Congress saw coming for a decade," he says. "The problem is not with the workers. The problem is not with the employers. The problem is with Congress."

Businesses are not asking for special treatment, he adds.

"There's nobody who says, 'Open the borders. Let everybody in,'" Chapman says. "The debate should be on how many of these workers do we reasonably need in a given year, and how do we put together a system that reflects what our economic needs truly are. The debate should be on how many of these numbers would be appropriate.

"The blind spot in the debate right now is that there is a legal system that has the huge door shut and it's boarded up," he says.

Chapman cites the Bracero Program, launched during World War II between the United States and Mexico in August 1942, which for 22 years was a guest-worker program for year-round workers. Chapman said he would not recommended a return to that program, which led to allegations that workers were abused, but that a similar one needs to be created because the current situation has so many employers and workers existing outside of the law.

In addition, Congress' failed effort in 2007, however, "was a bill nobody could love," he says.

And the federal government's next step looks to be equally unpopular: officials are trying to put into effect stringent "no-match" guidelines that would force employers to fire workers who cannot resolve name and Social Security number discrepancies within 90 days. The no-match rule remains on hold pending court action. The NRA has added its voice to those challenging the proposed rule.

Meanwhile, immigration raids at businesses are on the rise. The Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division last year arrested 30,407 suspects, double the number from the year earlier. ICE now has 95 agent teams operating nationwide, compared to 17 in 2003.