Senate Passes One-Year H-2B Extension
Last week during consideration of an appropriations bill, the Senate passed a one-year extension of the return guest worker exemption for the H-2B program. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) was a major advocate for its passage. Corey Connors, director of legislative relations for the American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA), said, “Passage in the senate was just the first hurdle in a longer effort to secure this extension.” The return worker exemption, if enacted into law, would increase the number of immigrant workers from the current 66,000 to the larger numbers possible when this exemption was in place in 2005 and 2006.
As part of the appropriations package, the extension provision will now become part of joint House and Senate negotiations, subsequent to adoption by both bodies, and then must be signed by the President. According to Connors, “The challenge in the House of Representatives is significant, given recent labor union efforts to damagingly increase employer burdens for any guest worker program adjustments.”
Connors stated that ANLA will continue to seek avenues for more immediate temporary relief, while continuing to advocate for a longer-term fix to the industry’s labor problems. “However, we now have some hope that we can get something done on a clean temporary extension,” Connors said. “It is important for all industry members whose businesses and customers are impacted by access to H-2B workers to encourage their senators and congressmen to pass this extension and move on to a longer-term answer to America’s labor needs.”
For more information, go to www.anla.org.
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