By Molly Parker
Staff Writer

South Carolina’s hospitality industry will be “in dire straits” if Congress fails to extend a visa program by the end of the month that allows hundreds of international workers short-term employment in the United States, said Tom Sponseller, president of the Hospitality Association of South Carolina.

The H2B visa is issued to short-term, non-agriculture workers in foreign countries after a business demonstrates it has made every effort to hire residents living legally in America.

The number of H2B visas issued each year had long been capped at 66,000, but three years ago, facing labor demands the United States couldn’t meet, Congress approved a measure that would artificially raise that cap by not counting the international workers who return year after year, he said. 

Without renewal, that provision expires annually, and Sponseller said earlier this month that the hospitality industry is very nervous that Congress won’t act to extend it by the Sept. 30 deadline.

If that’s the case, he said, “South Carolina’s tourism industry will take a very negative hit.”

It’s important that the measure gets approved before it expires, Sponseller said, because even if Congress comes back later this year and extends the provision, it puts businesses and workers behind in filing the complicated paperwork required.

That happened last year and three restaurants located at the popular Kiawah Island resort community, located 35 miles south of Charleston, had to postpone opening for a month in the spring while they awaited the arrival of international workers, Sponseller said.

Though he did not know the exact number of H2B workers in South Carolina, Sponsller said there are about 180,000 returning workers allowed to enter the United States annually on top of the 66,000 new H2B visas awarded each year.  

“These people are not replacing American workers,” he said. “The businesses have to advertise in the local community for locals to fill the jobs. If they don’t and cannot get enough people then they can use the H2B program.”

Citing how heavily the program supports tourism here, Sponseller said about 10% to 12% of seasonal workers in Myrtle Beach have H2B visas, including 50 lifeguards; about 30% of workers at Hilton Head Island have H2B visas, as well as a large number of workers on Kiawah.

Businesses must pay the international workers prevailing wage, but the jobs in question are not always attractive to Americans because they are temporary and typically laborious, such as landscaping and groundskeeping, and are during the hottest of summer months.

Many of the H2B visa holders in this area are from Jamaica, he said, which is attractive to businesses because the country offers a national health care system, leaving the employer off the hook. The Jamaicans are eager to come over, he said, because “they make more in four months than they could make in four years in Jamaica.”

The hospitality industry in South Carolina has taken the lead in pushing Congress to act on the Save our Small and Seasonal Business Act of 2007 by the Sept. 30 deadline.

Sponseller said it has bipartisan support and that no major organizations are lobbying against it. But the renewal was stalled because it was included in a larger controversial immigration reform package critics felt would have unfairly provided amnesty for the estimated 12 million immigrants living illegally in the United States. 

All the attention on illegal immigrants in the country and the businesses that hire them has made some companies more cautious about who they put on the  payroll; as such, it has made the H2B program more popular as well, said Laura Paris, who teaches immigration law at the Charleston School of Law.

“Every year, the cap is met sooner, and the exemption becomes more valuable,” said Paris, who also works with businesses wanting to hire internationals with H2B workers through her role as an associate attorney at Carlock, Copland, Semler and Stair LLP.

Molly Parker is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her directly at mparker@charlestonbusiness.com.

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