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Feb 25, 2009 3:19 pm US/Eastern
DeFede: Miami Jumps Into Foreign Worker Debate
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
The Miami City Commission will debate a resolution on Thursday prohibiting companies that do business with the city from hiring foreign workers under the H2B visa program.
The move comes in response to a
CBS4 News investigation which showed how foreign sheet metal workers were brought into the country for a major construction project in Bal Harbour even though there are more than a thousand unemployed sheet metal workers in South Florida.
"You've demonstrated this problem very clearly," Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff told
CBS4 News Wednesday afternoon. "What I can do as a city commissioner is not allow any building by the city of Miami or any infrastructure we might do to go to companies that would outsource these jobs. We should be impressing upon people to hire local folks whenever and wherever possible."
Sarnoff, who is sponsoring the resolution, said he expected a large turnout of unemployed construction workers to show up at Thursday's commission meeting. "We're going to hear and see the folks whose jobs are imperiled by these (visas)," Sarnoff said.
The H2B visa program has been around since the mid Eighties. It allows companies to bring in foreign workers for temporary, non-agriculture related jobs but only if there are no Americans available to do the work. Congress caps the number of visas at 66,000.
Unfortunately, as
CBS4 News discovered, the rules governing the program are rarely enforced and even when they are, they are still written in such a way as to favor employers.
For instance, employers are required to try and find American workers by advertising the jobs in the local newspaper. But the federal rules don't say when the ads need to be run and can come at the end of a narrow ten day recruitment period – leaving the American worker with no time to apply. This was the case with the St. Regis project in Bal Harbour where the company, CYVSA International, waited until the final days of the recruitment period to notify the union and place their ads. By the time the American sheet metal workers submitted their resumes, the deadline passed and the job was closed off to them.
The danger for Sarnoff's proposal is that it could be too sweeping. Even critics of the H2B visa program acknowledge there is a need in some communities and in some industries for H2B workers.
At the very least, Sarnoff said he wants companies that intend to use H2B visa to seek approval from the city in advance. He points out that under new rules for the H2B program established by the Bush Administration on January 18, employers no longer have to contact the state when they apply for H2B visas. The Bush Administration cut the states out of the process to make it easier for the companies. Sarnoff believes more scrutiny – and not less – is what is needed with this program.
"If the state isn't going to be notified then at least the city should be," he said.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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