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REP. BOUSTANY: Well, why don't we get started? Thank you all for coming. I want to thank my colleagues for joining me here.
Local economies and small businesses around the country are facing a critical workforce shortage. Seasonal jobs that have been filled for years by the temporary H-2B visa program are vacant. And these programs are really hitting our small businesses very, very hard.
Sugarcane is not being processed in my district. Rice is not being milled; it's not being bagged. Our seafood processors -- whether you're talking about crawfish, shrimp, fish, crabs are being turned away by processors because they don't have workers to clean and pick the catch. Our maritime industry is suffering. There's a huge need for the maritime industry, particularly in south Louisiana with the oil and gas industry going as it's going. And I've talked to workers -- I've talked to employers around the district. They can't find the workforce. And they've depended over the years on these H-2B visa workers to meet these needs.
Same thing with the construction industry in Louisiana. As we're trying to recover from two very bad storms a few years ago, our construction industry is suffering and we can't meet the needs.
The H-2B visa program provides small and seasonal businesses that drive many of our nation's regional economies with legal seasonal workers. In the fiscal -- 2008 arbitrary cap of 66,000 H-2B workers was met on January 2nd of this year. This arbitrary cap has hurt those who need seasonal workers later in the year, because they can't even put in the application to get them.
In past years, Congress has acted responsibly and allowed certain returning workers to be exempt from the H-2B arbitrary cap in order to meet the needs of many seasonal businesses that rely on these workers. This is a so-called returning worker provision that was in place. This temporary workforce helps employ thousands of permanent jobs because a lot of these small businesses need temporary workers to deal with an upsurge in business, but if they don't have those temporary workers to meet those needs, they'll go out of business, and then we'll lose permanent jobs.
Unfortunately, Congress has allowed the returning worker provision to expire last year and thousands of small businesses nationwide face critical shortages. Today, I will have a discharge petition on the floor of the house, H.Res. 1025, which would bring Bart Stupak's bill -- save our small and seasonal businesses act -- to the House floor for a vote. That's H.R. 1843.
I look forward to working with a broad, bipartisan group of members to solve this crisis for our small businesses. The American economy needs a stimulus. We all have been talking about the need for stimulus. And getting this program in place is critical to growth. The bipartisan returning worker provision is now being held political hostage. This is good policy that's being held hostage by politics.
Over the recess, I could tell you, I met with many small-business owners who depend on these. I mentioned some of them earlier -- crawfish, the crab processors, our construction industry, maritime, restaurant industry -- they all depend on this labor force to meet peak demand. And while American business owners suffer, legislation to fill this, sits -- fill this need sits idle. It's there; it's ready to go. We just need to get leadership to act on this.
So, I -- today, I appreciate you all being here to cover this. I appreciate my colleagues Adam, Jim and Rob for joining me. We're going to sign this discharge position and hopefully get things rolling on this. Thank you.
Adam?
REP. PUTNAM: Well, thank you, Dr. Boustany, for your leadership on this issue. And this clearly is an issue that cuts across regional lines. It cuts across party lines and takes on an increased relevance in this challenging economic climate. As we approach the summer season -- you see really a cross-section of states represented here, but obviously, in Florida we have the seafood issues, we have the hospitality and tourism issues that were referred to by Congressman Boustany. And we have to augment the existing permanent labor force with temporary legal workers who can help meet those peak demands.
Small-business owners create the vast majority of jobs in this country, and those jobs keep our economy growing and our workforce competitive. This discharge petition is necessary in order to do what it appears the Democratic majority will not do, which is to bring to the floor bipartisan legislation that strengthens and protects those small businesses and their workers.
A senior House Democrat, Representative Delahunt, told The New York Times on March 14th, "The H-2B visa program is being held hostage. We're putting at risk regional economies from the East Coast to the West Coast and many sections of the country in between."
Congressman Delahunt's absolutely right. This year, the cap for H-2B visas, 66,000, as Dr. Boustany said, was met on the 2nd day of the year. It's clear that this figure is insufficient to meet the needs of our small businesses and our growing -- and our economy. It's wrong to use vital legislation designed to protect small businesses and their workers as leverage for other reforms. This approach only punishes those who play by the rules and doubly so in this challenging economic climate.
This legislation has 145 co-sponsors. At the very least it deserves a full debate and an up-or-down vote on the floor of the House. And I'm proud to be part of the team to help bring that vote about, with the support of a lot of our other colleagues.
REP. BOUSTANY: Thanks, Adam.
Jim?
REP. GERLACH: Well, I'm Congressman Jim Gerlach, Pennsylvania's sixth district, and I very much appreciate the work that Congressman Boustany, Congressman Putnam and Congressman Latta is undertaking here with this effort here today to file and try to get discharged very important legislation that's going to help employers all across this nation on a very bipartisan basis. As Congressman Putnam indicated, this is a bipartisan effort to try to get a bill on the floor that's going to allow our small-business owners -- regardless if your landscaping, nursery, work lodging, restaurant, construction, to allow you to keep working and to allow those employers to keep job activities going in our local communities.
What's so ironic today, understand, we're going to have a bill on the floor that's going to make it easier to get visa approvals for foreign artists, like the Rolling Stones, to come and do concerts in the United States, but Speaker Pelosi seems to refuse to allow our small-business owners the opportunity to keep jobs working, keep people working in our individual districts. And I think that's absolutely wrong.
And what's also wrong about this process is simply the fact that we have a lot of Republicans and Democrats that agree on this issue. And as Congressman Putnam indicated, this is politics above policy, where we have Republicans and Democrats willing to work together, willing to come up with a good solution for our employers in our areas, and yet the speaker keeps this legislation off the floor for very special interests. And that's not right. And hopefully, through this discharge petition process, we are going to see an effort by both Republicans and Democrats to get a bill on the floor that's needed now so that our small-business owners have the ability to move forward in our communities with the jobs necessary to be done there in our communities.
The Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery Association has indicated that without this legislation, 300 American jobs are at risk this year, and at a loss of about $26 million in revenues by those businesses that are not able to operate without these temporary workers with H-2B visas. That's just Pennsylvania, in one industry that's affected by this issue, the landscaping and nursery industry. We have all other kinds of industries, as mentioned, that are likewise affected.
So this is going to have a huge economic impact if we don't get it done, at a time when everybody talks about what Washington can do to stimulate the economy. Well, what we can do immediately is pass good H-2B visa legislation to stimulate the economy in our local communities. And we call on the speaker and the majority leader to get this job done so that Republicans and Democrats can work together to help our local employers and our local communities.
Thank you. REP. : Rob?
REP. ROB WITTMAN (R-VA): Thank you. Dr. Boustany, thank you for your leadership on this issue. It is indeed an extraordinarily important issue for small business, and it is a bipartisan issue. It is an economic issue. It is critical to the lifeblood of small businesses throughout the United States. Whether they're in seafood, whether they're in the landscaping business, hospitality, all of them engage in businesses that have seasonal cycles.
And they do need these temporary workers to make sure that their businesses can not only survive but thrive during the times of year when they have these opportunities to make sure that their businesses are in the black.
So it's extraordinarily important. There's support on both sides of the aisle on this. It's critical that this bill make it to the floor, so that we can have this debate concerning this particular issue.
And I want to stress this is not an issue about illegal immigration. This is a program in place to have workers here temporarily to make sure that businesses can meet their demands, to make sure that they provide services and can be successful. So I think it's extraordinarily important.
And just as others here have heard, in traveling throughout my district, I hear from businesses from one end of eastern Virginia to the other about how important this is. They're facing a situation of not being able to process seafood, whether it's in the oyster industry or crab industry or the (finned ?) fish industry, whether they're in the landscaping business, whether they're out in there in the tourism industry -- which in eastern Virginia is extraordinarily important. This is the lifeblood for those businesses to be able to survive.
So it's critical that we, as a body here, get together and make sure that this bill comes to the floor, so that we can come to an agreement on how we address this issue, because at the bottom line, it affects jobs and it affects our economy. And you've heard a lot of discussion here on the Hill about doing things for the economy. One of the things we can do tops on that list is an immediate action, and that is to make sure that our small businesses have the temporary workers that they need, so they make sure that this season that they're going to be successful. And that's critically important in this entire effort.
So I thank Dr. Boustany for his leadership on this discharge petition to make sure that this bill gets it -- gets to the floor to have the discussion it deserves, and we need to get this issue resolved now. Thank you.
REP. : We'll be happy to take any questions. I thank my colleagues.
Yes?
Q Are you confident you're going to get enough to signatures to --
REP. : We're going to work to get the signatures, and we have -- as was stated, there is bipartisan support for the bill. We have -- there are 145 cosponsors. We're getting calls from others who have not cosponsored the bill who have an interest. We'll have the discharge petition available on the floor starting today, and we'll start working on signatures.
Q Does that mean that -- (off mike) -- you have 145 signatures on the discharge petition?
REP. : No, we're going to -- we'll have the discharge petition available today for those who want to sign, and we're hopeful that all those who had signed on to the bill will sign on to the discharge petition, but we'll have to see how that plays out.
Thank you.
Q Since several of you mentioned that this legislation -- (off mike) -- I wonder if you could elaborate on that.
REP. : Well, clearly the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has verbally stated that they're opposed to bringing this forward because they want to see what they call comprehensive immigration reform. But this is a separate issue. This is an economic issue. This is a small business issue, and as we're looking at an economy right now in a downturn, where we need to do everything we can to stimulate it, this is a logical place to start, by providing small businesses the help that they need and an adequate workforce that they need to deal with contracts.
Yeah?
Q I notice that you kept -- (off mike) -- yesterday, probably, the H1-B. Do you see any carry-over effect here? If you all do get this moved forward, the H1-B -- (off mike) -- can -- how many rifle shots are there -- are possible -- (off mike)?
REP. : Well, I don't know. We'll have to see how that works out, but you know, clearly the H1-B issue is important as well. There was a lot of talk in the week before the recess about this particular issue. But I'm focused on H2-B as an issue right now, because there are small businesses all around the country that are suffering -- many of them are actually possibly going out of business -- because they don't have the adequate workforce. This is a critical workforce issue today that needs to be solved. And I think the quicker we get on it and quit playing politics with this and help these small businesses, the better off we're going to be.
Yeah?
Q Congressman Stupak's original bill -- (off mike) -- do it for a longer period of time?
REP. : Yeah, obviously we'd like for a longer period of time, but it would be -- it's basically returning workers who've worked within the past three years to come back. And these are workers who have an established track record with a given business. I've spoken to employers in my district who have had the same workers coming back seven, eight, nine, 10 years. So these workers are already familiar with the jobs that they're doing. It's a program that's worked very well, and it really was foolish to get rid of that provision, because now what we have is an arbitrary cap that is not meeting the needs of these businesses.
And this is something that I think is fairly simple to fix. We can deal with the broader immigration debate as it comes up. But this is something that is an economic issue today facing our small businesses.
Anyone else?
Jim, do you want to --
REP. GERLACH: No. No, you -- (inaudible). Thank you.
REP. : Oh, okay.
Well, thank you. We appreciate you coming.
REP. GERLACH: Thanks, everybody.
REP. : Thanks.
Q Thank you.