Looking for help
Hotels rely increasingly on temporary, foreign labor, but their supply is threatened by immigration reform

by Donna C. Gregory
for Virginia Business
January 2007

For about six months of the year, Junior Morris leaves the tropical warmth of his native Jamaica for the chill of Virginia's Allegheny Mountains. Instead of palm trees, Bath County's highlands may be covered with snow and ice in the winter as Morris makes his way to work at The Homestead.

Morris works as a waiter, serving meals and the resort's signature high tea. "In January I go back to Jamaica, take two weeks off to be with my family, and then go back to work," says Morris. At home, Morris waits tables at Half Moon, a Jamaican resort where he has been employed for nine years. When spring rolls around, he gears up to head back to the states.

It's a good arrangement for Morris and The Homestead. He earns wages far above what he could make at home, and the resort gets an experienced worker during a peak season. "[Guest workers] fill a need that we can't find in this region," says Brett Schoenfield, the Homestead's president. With a population of only 5,000, Bath County doesn't offer a large applicant pool.

The Homestead isn't alone. Hotels and resorts across Virginia rely on seasonal foreign employees to offset a shortage of American workers in the hospitality industry. Yet in these days of immigration reform, the H-2B visa program - which allows foreign nationals to work for a sponsoring employee for a limited time - faces uncertainty. In recent years, the hiring cap has been met early, forcing the hospitality industry to scramble for help, sometimes in unconventional ways.

After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001, oversight of the H-2B program shifted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Since 1990, the federal cap on the number of H-2B visa workers allowed into the U.S. each year has been 66,000. Temporary guest workers are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. In 2004 and 2005, the cap was reached long before hotels who needed workers in the latter part of the year even applied, leaving some facilities short-handed.

"You had to have the request in before the beginning of the year, and by the time The Homestead and Virginia Beach needed them, the cap had been reached and they had nowhere to go [for workers]. … A lot of establishments had service issues," recalls Dennis Flannery, executive director of the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association.

The Homestead found itself totally shut out of the H-2B visa program in 2004 and 2005. "We were not able to pursue our full complement of needed workers," says Schoenfield. "We had a few who trickled in, but certainly not the magnitude to match our need." In the past, The Homestead has used as many as 125 seasonal foreign workers a year. They generally account for 10 to 15 percent of the resort's work force during its peak May-through-Thanksgiving season.

Consequently, The Homestead resorted to busing in workers. "We would go to a city [such as Baltimore, Charlotte, Richmond or Washington] and identify banquet waiters, and we would bring those individuals back to work for a couple of days and then take them back home," remembers Schoenfield. Busing workers to and from the Homestead in the Allegheny Mountains cost the resort "tens of thousands of dollars," he says.

Recently, rules governing H-2B visas have been relaxed. Returning workers such as Morris no longer count toward the annual cap, and the cap is now divided in half, allocating 33,000 workers for the first six months of each year and 33,000 workers for the last six months of a year.

But, the returning workers provision is temporary and has been extended only through this September. "There has been no long-term fix. It is a tenuous situation to be in," says Schoenfield.

Meanwhile, political debate over immigration reform continues on Capitol Hill. No one is sure how reform might affect H-2B workers, and that makes hospitality executives nervous. Nationwide, the $122 billion lodging industry employs more than a million workers, and they worry about customer service - the hallmark of the industry - if hotels can't get enough workers to pour the coffee or change the sheets. "Without [the guest workers], we would all be in real trouble," says Mike Watkins, general manager of the Holiday Inn Select in Midlothian.

With the U.S. planning to build a fence along its border with Mexico, there's a growing debate among Americans about illegal immigration and the idea that foreign workers take jobs away from U.S. workers. People often confuse seasonal H-2B workers with undocumented immigrants, says Flannery. "There's a misunderstanding about the value of these workers."

Guest workers come from middle-class backgrounds, says Flannery, and many already have careers in hospitality in their native countries. To work in the United States, they are required to pay a fee, and after they finish seasonal jobs, the law requires these visa holders to return home. "It is a ready source of skilled labor that does not take jobs from Americans," says Flannery.

Besides lodging, these workers can be found in such industries as landscaping, construction and manufacturing.

Before hiring H-2B workers, companies must advertise and try to hire U.S. workers for the positions. Hospitality executives say fewer American workers are seeking employment in their industry, a trend they blame on a strong economy. "The job market has been robust," says Doug Pons, general manager of the Quarterpath Inn in Williamsburg. "There are lots of opportunities for young people to work in industries that might pay a little bit more."

Pons hires five to 10 guest workers each year for the summer season when tourists typically visit Williamsburg's historical attractions. Most come from Europe - Russia, Poland and Bulgaria, for example - and many are college students on summer break, looking to earn money to pay for their education.

"They understand the American dream of coming and working hard and making some money and taking those monies back to their country to help them with their education," says Pons.

Now that the midterm elections are past, the hospitality industry hopes Congress will revisit immigration reform and resolve the uncertainty around H-2B visas. "We're not machine-oriented," says Schoenfield. "We need human beings, and there's no substitute for it. Robots won't clean guest rooms."