Post by kaima on Jul 27, 2012 12:58:42 GMT -7
Looks as if the Student Worker Visa Program is dying. Good for all those who theoretically want US employment, bad for trying to fill the positions with willing American workers, good for "Made in the USA" stickers to enjoy as you use your China made goods....
* * * *
Seafood industry to lose foreign student workers
Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2012 4:58 pm | Updated: 5:41 pm, Thu Jul 26, 2012.
Mary Lochner
Slender, bright young things file into the long, wooden hall at Peter Pan Seafoods in Dillingham, Alaska, to grab coffee and lunch on their break from working the line. They mill around and quickly fill in the empty seats along the rows of tables, or sit in a semi-circle outside smoking. It’s the scene locals jokingly refer to as the United Nations in Dillingham. The seafood processing workers are mostly college students hailing from foreign countries. Murmurs of conversations held in foreign tongues rise in the air at the plant near Nushugak Bay.
But this is the last season that will see foreign college students working here. They’re on what’s called a J-1 Summer Work Travel Visa. It’s a program under the State Department that allows foreign college students to work summer jobs in the U.S. in the spirit of cultural exchange. But after November of this year, the federal government is ending the program for all food manufacturers in the U.S.
That’s left seafood processors in Alaska working to figure out how they’ll replace more than 4,000 workers who come over through the J-1 program each fishing season to work the line.
“The answer is, we don’t know what we’re going to do yet,” said Ocean Beauty Seafoods spokesman Tom Sundle.
But one option for processors is to hire more locals, and that’s just what Copper River Seafoods plans to do.
“We have no plan to pursue any foreign labor going forward,” said chief business development officer Robin Richardson. Instead, she said, the company is automating some of its plant operations and hiring more Alaskans.
Richardson said Copper River Seafood has relied on J-1 workers in the past and through the current season. She said the workers tend to be “intelligent” and “reliable.” But, she said, even before the State Department announced the new restrictions on J-1 visas in May 2012, Copper River Seafoods was setting up a new workforce development program and looking to expand local hire.
“We did a major recruitment here in Alaska, as well as up (and) down the West Coast this spring,” Robinson said.
Another option is to hire foreign workers through the H2-A and H2-B visa work programs, which are regular work visas for employment in the United States. But that method is much more expensive in comparison to the J-1 visas, which are designed to facilitate cultural exchange and be easily accessible to students.
In the December 2011 issue of Corn and Soy, National Council of Agricultural Employers executive vice president Frank Gasperini bemoaned the costs and red tape faced by employers of foreign workers on the regular visa programs, saying employers paid between $1,000 and $3,000 per worker to complete the visa requirements.
Anchorage immigration and citizenship attorney Margaret Stock says that cost is just a baseline. On top of that, she said, an employer could expect to pay attorney’s fees, and, almost invariably, fines for “technical violations of the complex rules” during government inspections—what she calls the “hidden costs” of the H-2A and H-2B visa work programs.
“These programs are highly regulated, very expensive to use, and extremely bureaucratic,” Stock said in an email interview. “It's also virtually impossible to use them without a skilled lawyer (unlike the J-1 programs, where an employer and an employee don't need to have a lawyer involved).”
Stock said there are no other work visas for foreign workers that could be used for seafood processing jobs outside of the H-2A and H-2B visa work programs, next to the J-1 Summer Work Travel program that’s due to expire for food manufacturing and other industries November 1.
There’s an old American folk song called “I Sold My Soul to the Company Store.” The song is about the practice of keeping factory and farm workers underpaid or even in debt to their employers by controlling where they can get housing and food and then charging ludicrously high prices for those basic needs. It’s a scheme that some J-1 workers in the Summer Work Travel program have been subject to, according to government reports.
In August 2011, J-1 workers at a Hershey’s food manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania protested what they called exploitative and abusive practices. They accused Hershey’s of charging the students above-market prices for housing and other company-controlled services that left the students with between $40 and $140 for a week of work. The students also accused Hershey’s management with threatening students with deportation if the students complained.
Days after hundreds of J-1 workers at Hershey’s participated in the protest and walk-out, the federal government initiated investigations into their claims, and the State Department began a full review of its J-1 visa program. On May 4, 2012, it issued new restrictions on the program, including a prohibition of its use for most food manufacturing jobs, including seafood processing. The restrictions for food manufacturing and other sectors go into effect November 1.
Richardson said Copper River Seafoods has always paid its J-1 workers the same wages as their American counterparts for the same work. She said the company also took the students on tourism trips to see different parts of the state, and the fulfilled cultural exchange component that is a requirement under the program. But the company was already on its way to an overall long-term strategy of automating its plants and expanding local hire. She said the new rules have just hurried up that process.
As for what other seafood processors in Alaska will do to replace the workforce in the coming season, it’s hard to say. A spokeswoman for the State Department said there were 4,383 J-1 workers under the Summer Work Travel cultural exchange program working in the state of Alaska in 2011.
Ocean Beauty Seafood’s spokesman said he doesn’t know what his company will do to replace the workers. Peter Pan Seafoods administration director Dale Shiffler said the company doesn’t have anything to say the subject.
“I talked to other people in our office, and we don’t want to comment,” Shiffler said. “So good luck with trying to get (a response) from the other companies. I talked to management, and management said, ‘No interviews. No comments.’”
UniSea’s spokeswoman said it does not use J-1 workers. Telephoned media requests to Icicle Seafoods, Trident Seafoods and North Pacific Seafoods were left multiple times from July 2 through July 17, with no response.
* * * *
Seafood industry to lose foreign student workers
Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2012 4:58 pm | Updated: 5:41 pm, Thu Jul 26, 2012.
Mary Lochner
Slender, bright young things file into the long, wooden hall at Peter Pan Seafoods in Dillingham, Alaska, to grab coffee and lunch on their break from working the line. They mill around and quickly fill in the empty seats along the rows of tables, or sit in a semi-circle outside smoking. It’s the scene locals jokingly refer to as the United Nations in Dillingham. The seafood processing workers are mostly college students hailing from foreign countries. Murmurs of conversations held in foreign tongues rise in the air at the plant near Nushugak Bay.
But this is the last season that will see foreign college students working here. They’re on what’s called a J-1 Summer Work Travel Visa. It’s a program under the State Department that allows foreign college students to work summer jobs in the U.S. in the spirit of cultural exchange. But after November of this year, the federal government is ending the program for all food manufacturers in the U.S.
That’s left seafood processors in Alaska working to figure out how they’ll replace more than 4,000 workers who come over through the J-1 program each fishing season to work the line.
“The answer is, we don’t know what we’re going to do yet,” said Ocean Beauty Seafoods spokesman Tom Sundle.
But one option for processors is to hire more locals, and that’s just what Copper River Seafoods plans to do.
“We have no plan to pursue any foreign labor going forward,” said chief business development officer Robin Richardson. Instead, she said, the company is automating some of its plant operations and hiring more Alaskans.
Richardson said Copper River Seafood has relied on J-1 workers in the past and through the current season. She said the workers tend to be “intelligent” and “reliable.” But, she said, even before the State Department announced the new restrictions on J-1 visas in May 2012, Copper River Seafoods was setting up a new workforce development program and looking to expand local hire.
“We did a major recruitment here in Alaska, as well as up (and) down the West Coast this spring,” Robinson said.
Another option is to hire foreign workers through the H2-A and H2-B visa work programs, which are regular work visas for employment in the United States. But that method is much more expensive in comparison to the J-1 visas, which are designed to facilitate cultural exchange and be easily accessible to students.
In the December 2011 issue of Corn and Soy, National Council of Agricultural Employers executive vice president Frank Gasperini bemoaned the costs and red tape faced by employers of foreign workers on the regular visa programs, saying employers paid between $1,000 and $3,000 per worker to complete the visa requirements.
Anchorage immigration and citizenship attorney Margaret Stock says that cost is just a baseline. On top of that, she said, an employer could expect to pay attorney’s fees, and, almost invariably, fines for “technical violations of the complex rules” during government inspections—what she calls the “hidden costs” of the H-2A and H-2B visa work programs.
“These programs are highly regulated, very expensive to use, and extremely bureaucratic,” Stock said in an email interview. “It's also virtually impossible to use them without a skilled lawyer (unlike the J-1 programs, where an employer and an employee don't need to have a lawyer involved).”
Stock said there are no other work visas for foreign workers that could be used for seafood processing jobs outside of the H-2A and H-2B visa work programs, next to the J-1 Summer Work Travel program that’s due to expire for food manufacturing and other industries November 1.
There’s an old American folk song called “I Sold My Soul to the Company Store.” The song is about the practice of keeping factory and farm workers underpaid or even in debt to their employers by controlling where they can get housing and food and then charging ludicrously high prices for those basic needs. It’s a scheme that some J-1 workers in the Summer Work Travel program have been subject to, according to government reports.
In August 2011, J-1 workers at a Hershey’s food manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania protested what they called exploitative and abusive practices. They accused Hershey’s of charging the students above-market prices for housing and other company-controlled services that left the students with between $40 and $140 for a week of work. The students also accused Hershey’s management with threatening students with deportation if the students complained.
Days after hundreds of J-1 workers at Hershey’s participated in the protest and walk-out, the federal government initiated investigations into their claims, and the State Department began a full review of its J-1 visa program. On May 4, 2012, it issued new restrictions on the program, including a prohibition of its use for most food manufacturing jobs, including seafood processing. The restrictions for food manufacturing and other sectors go into effect November 1.
Richardson said Copper River Seafoods has always paid its J-1 workers the same wages as their American counterparts for the same work. She said the company also took the students on tourism trips to see different parts of the state, and the fulfilled cultural exchange component that is a requirement under the program. But the company was already on its way to an overall long-term strategy of automating its plants and expanding local hire. She said the new rules have just hurried up that process.
As for what other seafood processors in Alaska will do to replace the workforce in the coming season, it’s hard to say. A spokeswoman for the State Department said there were 4,383 J-1 workers under the Summer Work Travel cultural exchange program working in the state of Alaska in 2011.
Ocean Beauty Seafood’s spokesman said he doesn’t know what his company will do to replace the workers. Peter Pan Seafoods administration director Dale Shiffler said the company doesn’t have anything to say the subject.
“I talked to other people in our office, and we don’t want to comment,” Shiffler said. “So good luck with trying to get (a response) from the other companies. I talked to management, and management said, ‘No interviews. No comments.’”
UniSea’s spokeswoman said it does not use J-1 workers. Telephoned media requests to Icicle Seafoods, Trident Seafoods and North Pacific Seafoods were left multiple times from July 2 through July 17, with no response.
