Reported H-2B visa problems for its restaurant staff forced an elite yacht club in the Hamptons to temporarily suspend its restaurant service.
The oceanfront Devon Yacht Club reportedly has a $100,000 membership fee and obviously employs foreigners to make $40 cheeseburgers and $25 dollar ice cream sundaes. (That’s a guess.)
In a letter to club members obtained by the New York Post, the club wrote, “We are sorry to inform you of the immediate cancellation of our food services until lunch on Friday. However, the bar will be open tomorrow (Thursday), and we will have a limited selection of bar bites available (5pm to 8pm).”
The club isn’t sure who’s to blame for the visa mishap that resulted in its H-2B visa holders having to immediately return to their home countries for 60 days before they can file for a renewal.
The letter continues:
The H2B visa approval for our cooks is still not resolved. It seems that an oversight either by the agent or attorney responsible for submitting our petition or perhaps by the US Immigration Office itself has resulted in a situation where our H2B kitchen staff must leave the country immediately and return to their home countries for at least 60 days before their visas can be renewed.
An H-2B visa is government approval for non-farm temporary jobs after employers prove they cannot find Americans to fill all the slots. This can be due to not enough Americans applying for the job or not enough Americans qualified for the job. In the case of this yacht club, the restaurant staff is a seasonal, warm-weather job. But “temporary” with an H-2B can be up to three years.
I’d be curious why an exclusive country club in the Hamptons, one that would provide young and ambitious Americans the opportunity to make contacts with the wealthy (see: Flamingo Kid, The) struggles to find American workers.
But now, unless more H-2B workers are imported from elsewhere to fill these slots, I’m willing to bet that with the right pay scale, these Hampton elites will find plenty of American kitchen help from American Americans.
There is no such thing as a “job Americans won’t do” if the pay is fair.
When people talk about farm labor and field work as a job Americans won’t do, it makes me wonder why I, as an American, spent three long, hot, grueling summers working 14 hours a day, seven days a week doing farm labor and field work. It was brutal work, but it was the kind of work that taught me how to work, to grow up a little, and to understand the value of a hard-earned dollar.
These clubs should be going out of their way to hire young people, pay them well, and then have them work their butts off to teach them a work ethic and how to handle the real world.