US employers relying on foreign work visas to fill jobs

DALLAS (NewsNation) — Amid the labor shortage impacting businesses across the U.S., a viable solution for many is to hire more foreign workers.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of available jobs is nearly double the unemployment rate.

To bridge the gap, companies are turning to foreign work visa programs, including the H-2A and H-2B visas, to recruit workers from abroad.

The landscaping industry often faces a significant number of job vacancies, particularly during the summer season, and employers are seeing a demand for their workers throughout the country.

In 2019, Rusty McCommas and his wife purchased Evergreen Lawn and Landscaping in North Texas, and they’ve been faced with the challenge of not being able to find employees.

“We had to cut 20% of our customers because we couldn’t get enough workers to do the job,” McCommas said.

In response to the worker shortage problem, McCommas applied for workers at the H-2 visa program, a federal program that connects non-agricultural workers from more than 80 countries to temporary jobs in the U.S. for up to nine months and is typically seasonal in nature.

Now, out of McCommas’ current 33 employees, 15 of them are legally from Mexico and participating in the H-2 visa program to work in his company.

“They come over here. They want to work away from families for nine months and working as much as they can to support their families back home,” McCommas said.

Due to the ongoing labor shortage, more American companies are relying on the H-2B visa program.

The U.S. issues more than 766,000 visas for all foreign worker programs, an increase from 616,000 issued in 2019, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Action Visa Assistance, a Texas-based company, actively tries to bridge the gap by assisting employers in finding workers from abroad.

“We hear the same story from everyone who calls: They can’t find anyone anywhere. They are advertising all over the place — LinkedIn, Facebook,” said Anique Watson, of Action Visas Assistance.

Watson said the majority of requests for agriculture under the H-2A visa program are directed toward California, Florida and Texas. Meanwhile, H-2B visa requests primarily go to Texas and Louisiana for landscaping, hospitality and restaurant industries.

The Department of Labor sets the wages for these workers, which is often much higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

“Often they’re paying more, offering incentives like housing, offering wages to get people to take these positions,” Watson said.

“Asking people to go work nine hours in the day is hard work hard, but we try to run ads all the time, and it’s just hard to find reliable people willing to want to work in this type of industry and we pay well,” McCommas said.

McCommas said he pays employees within the range of $16 to $30 an hour, and every employee who isn’t a part of the visa program gets the same benefits and wages.

Action Visa Assistance said that each H-2B worker supports four American jobs.