CENTRAL COASTING: Salinas Valley Fair highlights H-2B visa struggles

Vicente is one of 80 people setting up for the Salinas Valley Fair. He’s been working the King City event setting up rides at the carnival for the last five years. He tells KION that he’s here because they pay is much better than it is back at his home in Mexico.

“Here I make good money. But when I work in Mexico, I work for 10-12 hours a day and make about five dollars a day,” Vicente said.

H-2B recipients, like Vicente, make up more than half of the Salinas Valley Fair’s carnival workforce. CEO of Butler Amusement Lance Moyer says his is one of the lucky companies who filled all of its needs through the temporary non-agricultural worker program, which bringing in workers from other countries to the United States. Government numbers show there were three times the number of worker positions requested than are available H-2B visas for the first half of the 2019 fiscal year.

But then on May 8th, the Trump Administration added an additional 30 thousand of the temporary visas, which Moyer says brought it to its highest level in decades. He has been lobbying in DC for more H-2B visas for years, but says for some states the addition is too late.

“There’s a lot of other industries using the H-2B workers and there’s a lot of companies in the country that don’t have the H-2B workers and they’re unable to do business.”

The time away can add up to nine months out of the year. Moyer says this keeps many U.S. resident not wanting to do the job, so he says they have no choice but to hire from H-2B.

“We do Idaho, Washington, Oregon. We do a lot of traveling. And a lot of people, American people, just don’t want to be away from their families for that long,” Moyer said.

While the Trump Administration has increased the cap on the number of H-2Bs, it has also increased oversight on who is allowed in.

“(They will look at your) personal record. Like you don’t have a problem with the police and you don’t have tickets,” Vicente said. “(It is) more difficult.”

According to website Carnival Warehouse, the overflow of requests this year let to a system failure, with some companies’ requests not going through, and, therefore, they did not receive the required labor force.

A release by Homeland Security announcing the H-2B visa increases writes – “Congress – not DHS – should be responsible for determining whether the annual numerical limitations for H-2B workers set by Congress need to be modified and by how much, and for setting parameters to ensure that enough workers are available to meet employers’ temporary needs throughout the year.”

The increase also only applies for people who had the designation in the last three years.