Rick Farrick, who owns five bed-and-breakfasts in Newport, said he employs about a half-dozen H-2B workers from Jamaica during the summers.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

Employers in Newport and Block Island are scrambling from Florida to the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston, hoping to find seasonal workers before the annual influx of tourists arrives this summer.

Rhode Island hotel and restaurant owners say they’re in a bind because about 600 foreign workers, who had been able to work in Rhode Island under temporary visas, are unable to return this year because of an impasse in Congress. Legislation that would increase the number of workers allowed into the country under the visa program, designated H-2B by the federal government, has stalled in Congress because of the general controversy over the immigration issue.

“People are scared. They are desperate to find workers,” said Frank Flanagan, a Newport attorney who specializes in immigration.

Dale Venturini, president of the Rhode Island Hospitality and Tourism Association, said H-2B workers, mostly from Jamaica, are typically employed as housekeepers and kitchen help at hotels, restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts on Block Island and Newport during the summer tourist season.

“They were the perfect fit for our business,” said Susan O’Donnell, director of human resources for the Hotel Viking in Newport, which used about a dozen H-2B workers last year. “They are pure peak-season, peak-load employees. They don’t want to stay. They want to work and go home.”

All winter, Venturini said, members of the hospitality association have been worried about how they will replace their H-2B workers, many of whom have been coming to Rhode Island for a decade or more. At the same time, hotel and restaurant owners say they’ve been hearing from their longtime employees in Jamaica and elsewhere, asking about their jobs.

The phrase H-2B has become “a swear word” around her office, Venturini said, adding that she’s concerned about understaffing at hotels and restaurants this summer. “Have you ever gone into a restaurant and wondered why you can’t be seated even though you see empty tables? Maybe it’s because the restaurant doesn’t have enough people working there,” she said.

Keith Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, said the visa situation is deeply frustrating for Newport’s restaurant and hotel owners, who are already facing a nationwide economic slowdown and high gas prices, and now have to add potential staff shortages to their problems.

Venturini said she’s been working through the state Department of Labor and Training, which runs a group of employment centers called netWORKri, plus community organizations such as Amos House and the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, in an effort to find local seasonal workers.

Heather Singleton, vice president of operations for the Hospitality and Tourism Association, even went to the ACI in Cranston to inquire about their work-release program. Prison officials confirmed that the meeting took place, but so far there’s been no further action.

Connie Parks, acting coordinator of the employer service unit at the Department of Labor and Training, said the hours required makes finding seasonal workers more difficult. “People don’t like to work weekends and holidays. They’re looking for a regular day shift, a traditional Monday through Friday.” Parks said her department is making a particular effort to keep the job boards at netWORKri centers up to date with seasonal jobs, since not everyone who uses the centers has access to a computer.

The Newport County Chamber of Commerce and the Rhode Island Hospitality and Tourism Association, in cooperation with netWORKri and the Community College of Rhode Island, will hold a job fair aimed at finding local seasonal employees on May 12 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Newport campus of CCRI.

The search for local seasonal workers comes at a time when the unemployment rate in Rhode Island has risen to 5.8 percent, with 33,400 people unemployed, according to figures released last month by the state Department of Labor and Training.

But Venturini, and the employers who use H-2B workers, say that the visa program does not take jobs away from American citizens.

“We don’t have people banging down our doors to do housekeeping jobs,” Venturini said. (Hotel and B&B owners interviewed said housekeepers earn between $9 and $12 an hour, plus tips, depending on location and experience.)

O’Donnell said that when she advertised housekeeping jobs in the Providence Journal, she only had two responses. One wanted only full-time work, which wasn’t available at the time. The second applicant was calling from New York City, under the mistaken notion that the jobs were on Long Island, not Rhode Island.

Several factors make recruiting American workers for seasonal jobs difficult, Venturini said. Some people just don’t want to clean dirty rooms, she said, plus the jobs are temporary and often require working weekends and holidays.

There are also transportation issues, particularly to Block Island. What’s more, a spate of new hotel construction in Providence has made recruiting summer workers from the city more difficult for hotels and restaurants in Newport and Block Island.

As for college students, they are increasingly more interested in internships or jobs that will directly enhance their career prospects. And with Newport and Block Island trying to create “shoulder seasons” before Memorial Day and after Labor Day, college students are often not available when employers need them.

In order to obtain H-2B workers, employers must follow specific guidelines to offer the jobs to American workers first. The positions must be posted with a state work force agency, which in the case of Rhode Island is the Department of Labor and Training. The jobs must also be advertised in a general-circulation newspaper for three consecutive days. After an H-2B application has gone through state scrutiny, the form must go to the federal Department of Labor, where employers have the option of paying a $1,000 fee to ensure swift processing.

“We would love to hire American workers, and not have to deal with housing, airline tickets, fees. As a business, why would you go through all this unless you had to?” said the Hotel Viking’s O’Donnell. “We’re a hotel, first and foremost. We need clean rooms. We need to have skilled housekeepers.”

The H-2B visa was established to allow industries with seasonal needs, whether skiing in Colorado, seafood processing in Louisiana or tourism in Newport, to augment their work force with temporary employees. In 1991, the number of H-2B workers was capped by Congress at 66,000.

In 2005, Congress passed the Save Our Seasonal and Small Business Act, which allowed foreign nationals who had worked in the United States on H-2B visas to return without counting against the 66,000-person cap. Last year, more than 120,000 foreign workers came into the country on H-2B visas. But the act expired on Sept. 30, sending the cap back down to 66,000. Unless Congress takes immediate action, Venturini said, she expects very few, if any, of the 600 H-2B workers who had spent their summers working in Rhode Island to return.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., have introduced bills in the Senate and House that would once again exempt returning H-2B workers from the cap. Stokes said all four members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation –– Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Representatives James Langevin and Patrick Kennedy — support the measures. But he said he doesn’t think it will pass, certainly not in time to help Rhode Island employers this summer.

Dan Mooers, an immigration lawyer and strategist for Save Small Business, a Bethesda, Md.-based advocacy group for businesses that use H-2B workers, said the issue has become mired in the larger debate over immigration. He said the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is opposed to passing piecemeal legislation addressing immigration, such as the H-2B bill, saying such measures distract from its larger goal of comprehensive immigration reform.

“I recognize that H-2B visa fixes are an important part of the immigration crisis,” Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif., chairman of the caucus, said in an interview with The New York Times. “But that should be just another check mark in the column as to why this Congress must take real action on immigration reform.”

Reed, who said he had met with representatives from Rhode Island’s tourism industry, said he is a cosponsor of Mikulski’s bill. Although comprehensive immigration reform needs to be addressed, he said, that does not means action shouldn’t be taken on H-2B legislation. “I think we can still move forward. This is an issue that’s important on its own, and it should be dealt with.”

In the House of Representatives, Langevin said he is also cosponsor of legislation that would allow more H-2B workers into the country. “I’ve heard a lot from the business community [in Rhode Island] and this is a major priority for them,” he said. “This is an issue that directly affects the tourism and hospitality business in Rhode Island.”

Langevin said the Hispanic Caucus would prefer the “whole package” when it comes to immigration reform, although he stopped short of saying the caucus was opposed to H-2B measures. He said the House bill, currently in the Judiciary Committee, may shortly be the subject of hearings in the immigration subcommittee.

But Mooers said he is not optimistic about congressional action. “It’s bleak, and it’s looking bleaker with every passing day, certainly when it comes to helping people this season. Prospects aren’t looking bright. And it stinks. It just absolutely stinks,” he said.

Rick Farrick, who owns five B&Bs in Newport — the Cleveland House, Admiral Farragut Inn, Clarkeston, the Wynstone and the Elm Street Inn — said congressional inaction makes no sense. “I’ve already had calls from illegal immigrants who want to work. I ask if they have a valid Social Security card, and they say no. So the illegal immigrants are already here. But the people who rightfully want to come here and work can’t get in . . . they’re penalizing people who are doing things the right way, the legal way.” Farrick said he used about a half-dozen H-2B workers from Jamaica during the summers.

With Congress so far unable to ride to the rescue, hotel and restaurant employers in Rhode Island are using a variety of strategies to find summer workers.

One solution is to search for H-2B workers already in the country and see if they are willing to extend their visas. Flanagan said such workers can stay as long as three years if they can find sponsoring employers. So some area hotels are looking south, where the winter tourist season is coming to an end, to find workers willing to stay.

O’Donnell said she managed to find 10 H-2B workers in Alabama to work at the Viking. “It was a sales job,” she said. “They didn’t even know where New England was.”

Steven Filippi, president of Ballard’s Inn on Block Island, said he uses about 40 H-2B workers every year, mostly from the Philippines, to work in his restaurant. That’s roughly half his staff.

Filippi said his chef is from the Philippines and he’s bringing 17 people back to Block Island this summer on J-1 visas, which are designed for students. And Filippi went to Florida, where he interviewed 200 H-2B workers willing to extend their visas, and hired 30 of them to work at Ballard’s.

Farrick said he planned to wait another week or two to see if Congress acts, because he doesn’t want to be in the position of recruiting new workers and then finding out his old staff is available after all. But if nothing happens in the next two weeks, he said, he will start looking for H-2B workers in Vermont and New Hampshire, where the ski season is ending, and find out if they are willing to extend their visas.

Venturini said one alternative to bringing in workers on H-2B visas is to use people on the student J-1 visas. However, from an employer’s point of view, the J-1s are less than ideal. O’Donnell pointed out that while H-2B holders are obligated to work for a specific employer, J-1 students are not, so they can leave for a job with a larger salary or simply take off to see the Grand Canyon before they go home.

asmith@projo.com