Wrangling for increased caps on seasonal workers has become an annual tradition for the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
On the latest episode of the CoStar News Hotels podcast, Ashley McNeil, vice president of federal government affairs at the American Hotel and Lodging Association, said it's clear that businesses need more than the annual limit of 66,000 employees, and there are more efficient ways to address the problem than marginally boosting the cap each year.
"The limit was put in place in 1990, and it's obviously woefully insufficient for current demands," she said.
McNeil also serves as the chair of the H-2B Workforce Coalition, a group that describes it self as representing "thousands of employers and their representatives from the lodging, landscaping, seafood, restaurant, tourism, equine, forestry, amusement parks, golf courses, and other industries" in need of a more robust seasonal workforce.
That group recently commissioned a study by Edgeworth Economics that highlighted the fact that not only do H-2B workers not take away jobs from Americans, but in areas where they are most prevalent, American workers have higher rates of employment and wages on average.
"For workers with more than a high school degree, each additional H-2B worker in a local area is associated with the employment of 3.5 to 4.1 additional full-time equivalent employees," the study states. "Across all workers in the local area, wages grew 1.6% more, on average, in areas that hired more H-2Bs."
McNeil said the jobs performed by people with H-2B visas, who often come from countries such as Jamaica, are not ones in demand stateside in large part because the realities of seasonal work have shifted in the decades since the program was created.
"Years ago, they used to be jobs that college students would fill or teachers would fill," she said. "But with shoulder seasons, those folks just aren't available. They're still working. They're still in school. And summer season starts in May, depending on your location, and goes until October. So the June, July and August time frame, it just isn't realistic anymore."
McNeil is on Capitol Hill every day pressing this issue — along with other priorities for the hotel industry — and believes the more legislators hear real-life stories and impacts on the issue, the more they are swayed. But it's also unlikely that meaningful immigration reform will be achieved in the short term, she added.
"I think it might not be a priority," she said. "I think the priority is still on securing the border, but I'm doing everything I can. I'm going to knock on doors every day so that we can finally get some relief for our members."
For the rest of the interview with AHLA's Ashley McNeil, listen to the podcast above.