E D I T O R I A L

More and more in our new era of polarization, our leaders seem unable to set aside their politics and ideology to face and solve obvious problems. And nowhere is this trend more visible than on any issue that touches on immigration.

Our cover story this month describes the struggles of area employers who’ve come to rely on foreign workers to help fill low-skill, seasonal jobs.

Under what’s known as the H-2B visa program, the federal government allows 66,000 of these workers into the country each year, half in the winter and half in the summer, to work for landscapers, stone masons, resorts, restaurants and even on the backstretch at the Saratoga Race Course.

Every year, more employers across the nation apply for workers through the program. With the workers assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis, businesses rush to submit their paperwork at the start of each new application period.

But this year, with employer petitions far outpacing the number of available visas after just a few days, the government abruptly decided to award the guest workers by lottery. That left business owners in a panic, fearing they might wind up with none of the laborers they were expecting.
This story isn’t about immigration per se, because the workers at issue go back to their home countries when their seasonal jobs end. But it’s easy to see how the federal government’s handling of the H-2B program (and similar programs for farm workers and for highly skilled technology workers) is being hemmed in by our poisonous arguments over immigration.
On the right, there are those who say the H-2B program is taking jobs away from Americans and therefore should be curtailed.

On the left, critics like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., say the H-2B program shouldn’t be expanded because unscrupulous employers sometimes exploit the foreign workers they hire.
And both sides suggest that if employers aren’t able to attract local workers, well, maybe they should try harder or pay better.

Stuck in the middle are the owners of some small and mid-sized businesses who aren’t abusing anyone and who likely wouldn’t remain in business very long if they tried to hike wages to the level necessary to attract a significant number of new hires from the local population.
In most of the counties in our region, the population is more or less stable or even declining. And even in the one county that’s growing (Saratoga), unemployment is low and median income is high. Our region is also graying, as many of our young people leave the area for good jobs in metropolitan New York, Boston and other big cities.

The result is that there simply aren’t enough willing hands here to do a lot of work that needs doing – especially in lower-wage jobs involving hard, outdoor labor. The workers we’re importing through the H-2B program are filling jobs that in many cases would otherwise be left unfilled.
As for exploitation, the foreign workers taking H-2B jobs are coming to this country willingly. Many return every year – or would if our government would let them. How is that exploitation?
There is one sense in which H-2B workers are being treated unfairly, but it’s not in the way that Senator Sanders thinks.

Many H-2B workers would happily stay year-round if we’d let them, lending their hands to our economy in other ways during the off-season. If our immigration policies were a little more grounded in reality, we’d welcome them with open arms.