By Ruthanne Johnson
-- Law and order is for the purpose of establishing justice, and . . . when they fail to do this purpose they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
Martin Luther King Jr.
After being laid off from the hotel where she worked in Jamaica, Maxine Brown began coming to the U.S. to work under a program called the H2B Work Visa in 1996. Both Burns and her sister work for Beaver Run Resort, where they and several others are fondly  thought of as pioneers of the hotel’s well-loved Jamaican staff. Of the 70 or so Jamaicans at Beaver Run, about 10 have been returning for the last eight seasons.
Brown works as deli supervisor and lives in employee housing, where she has cable, internet access and two roommates. Her sister works at the front desk. They both depend on the income to help their families back home.
“My apartment is small but comfortable, sufficient, with two bedrooms and a kitchenette,” Brown said, adding that she enjoys the cold weather but misses her husband and the cool ocean breeze. “I want to work another two seasons so we can finish building our house,” which is just across the street from the ocean.
“I am looking forward to the goals I have been working towards all these years,” she added.
But, there’s a dark cloud looming over the Colorado mountains, which could mean hard times for thousands of these temporary foreign workers.
For years, guest workers have come from all over the world – Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Eastern Europe – and been welcomed into the U.S., solicited even, to obtain an H2B Work Visa. Intended to fill the employment gap, the program allows foreign workers temporarily into the country to work in seasonal industries such as landscaping, construction, and hospitality, among others. But with the elections drawing near, the H2B program is deliberately being tied to the larger immigration issue, and many of guest workers are being turned away.
During the winter and summer months, the workers come to Colorado’s resort towns where they are employed as housekeepers, janitors, cooks, cashiers, ski instructors, and in other positions regarded as unskilled and semi-skilled labor.  They come only for a short time, usually about four months, and then they go home. Many return to the U.S. year after year, along with family members, and consider the seasonal work as a career. The Colorado ski industry has come to depend on these temporary workers, who usually fill about 10 percent of the overall resort jobs.
“The foreign worker is important to the resort business, especially when the unemployment rate is low and it becomes more difficult to find employees domestically,” said Kelly Ladyga, corporate communications director at Vail Resorts, which has been using guest workers for about ten years. “Housekeeping has traditionally been one of the toughest areas to fill with domestic employees, and we have a clientele from around the world – lots from Mexico and South America – and need skilled, bilingual instructors for our ski and snowboard schools.”
Vail’s ski staff accommodates about 30 different languages, including Mandarin.
Like Vail Resorts, Beaver Run Resort in Breckenridge began using guest workers about eight years ago.
“We started with just a few Jamaicans – about nine or 10,” said John Mullen, human resources director at Beaver Run. “We recruited them from a rival hotel, and the word got out quick in their community. At one point, we were receiving 50 calls a day from Jamaica.”
“We began hiring their family members, and now we have about 70 who come to work for us each season. About 90 percent of our staff are returning employees,” Mullen explained, adding that the benefit of returning workers is that employers don’t have to retrain them or worry about them fitting in and making friends.
Temporary Work Visas Insufficient For Demand
Despite being mutually beneficial to employers and employees, H2B difficulties began shortly after the annual cap of 66,000 guest workers was surpassed in 2004. President Bush put a temporary band-aid on the problem in 2005, by signing into law an exemption that kept returning seasonal workers from counting against the national cap. The exemption provided significant relief to seasonal businesses. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 97,279 workers came to the U.S. with H2B visas in 2006, with Colorado using about 25 percent of that number. But the provision expired in September 2007, and Congress quickly scrambled to address the issue before the winter resort towns began their season. However, an extension of the provision was blocked by Congress, and many of the businesses and guest workers were left in the lurch.
Another Jamaican pioneer at Beaver Run Resort, Winsome Symister, is in her eighth season in housekeeping. She works both the winter and summer seasons in Breckenridge. For Symister, her American job provides a steady income that performs well against the Jamaican dollar. This past summer, she was not allowed into the U.S. because of the H2B problems, and instead had to accept work as a field hand in Jamaica.
“It’s hard work. I picked vegetables all day because I had to make money,” she said, explaining the better-paying jobs are filled by people who stay in her native country year-round.
The list of guest workers dependent on their American jobs is long. Delton Bailey and Fox Hamil, a cook and a cashier at Beaver Run, said they would be hard pressed to find a job back home. Bailey has two children he helps to support, and Hamil has five.
With elections just around the corner, the H2B program is now being used as leverage by proponents and critics of immigration reform.
“This is being used as a carrot in the larger immigration issue,” said Mary Birk, immigration and employment lawyer with the Baker and Hostetler Legal Firm in Denver. “These workers are legal, pay their taxes, and are hired only after a need has been demonstrated. As far as I can see, they are not taking any jobs from U.S. citizens.”
But strong criticisms of the program have come from labor unions, which claim the guest workers take away jobs from Americans and keep wages low. They also liken the guest worker program to a slave labor of sorts, saying the H2B program tethers the worker to the employer, disallows them from employment at another job, and does not give opportunity for upward mobility.
In Colorado’s resort towns, most H2B employees make at least $9 per hour, explained Mullen, although he conceded that employees have to pay for their own transportation to and from the U.S.
“We subsidize employee housing, and recently started a bonus program to help pay for their airfare,” he added.
Healthcare is also not part of the temporary workers’ compensation package, but employees have access to a free clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays after 5:30 p.m.
Critics in Congress have vowed not to renew the H2B or any other temporary worker program until immigration reform resolves the status of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working illegally in the U.S.
"The discussion over extending H2B visas is inherently linked to our nation's greater immigration debate, and it must be resolved within that context," said California Congressman Joe Baca, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The caucus believes that separating the two issues would hinder immigration reform, because once the needs of the H2B proponents are met, they may withdraw their support.
"Congress has an obligation to provide sustainable solutions that behoove both the business and immigrant communities, and for that reason, H2B visas have played a vital role in each proposal introduced and endorsed by the CHC this year,” Baca said.
For Colorado businesses, the process for hiring H2B workers is intensive and begins well before their first day of work.
“We solicit domestic employment aggressively around the country and in Colorado, and have doubled our job fairs to address the issue,” said Ladyga. “We expect to be fully staffed this season.”
Mullen said that Beaver Run retained all but five of their returning employees this winter, but he expects the H2B problems to continue at least into the summer of 2008.
“The cap was never enforced, but now we’re at the whim of the government,” he said, adding he hopes one of the two H2B bills pending in legislature will make it through Congress to exclude returning workers from the annual cap.
Immigration lawyer Birk doesn’t see a downside to the H2B program. She is also hopeful about congressional action.
“There are proponents, such as Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who will be pursuing this bill until it is successful,” Birk said.
Until that time, the H2B employers and guest workers such as Brown, Symister, Bailey and Hamil will have to wait, wonder and make alternative plans.
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