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H2A seasonal visa program isn’t the fix for businesses struggling to hire employees
A custom harvester says he’s struggling to hire employees and the seasonal H2A visa program isn’t the solution.
Ryan Haffner is with U.S. Custom Harvesters Inc. and tells Brownfield, “It’s not just like we quit two or three months out of the year,” Haffner says. “We work year round but we can only have one most of workforce for 9 or 10 months.”
He operates his own business in Kansas and says he has experience hiring foreign workers from, “Europe and South Africa and we’ve had Brazil and New Zealand and all over the world.”
Haffner says the program can be beneficial, but it can also be a liability. “It’s a key part of our business. We couldn’t live without it,” Haffner says. “It could be definitely be streamlined. It definitely has some issues and it is a long cumbersome process to get it.”
He says he expects reforms to the program, but it can be complicated because it involves several agencies like Homeland Security.
