A federal visa program used by fish processing plants and diamond sellers in Alaska to hire seasonal workers from abroad is on temporary hold in response to a court ruling.
With the federal departments of Labor and Homeland Security mum on when the program will restart, some business owners are growing nervous.
"I'm not going to get too excited right now, but in a couple of months, if it hasn't been resolved, well, that would be bad," said Mike Erickson, president and CEO of Alaska Glacier Seafoods in Juneau.
Known as "H-2B," the visa program is generally used by businesses that are unable to find American workers to fill certain seasonal, temporary jobs. On March 5, the departments stopped processing visa applications after a federal judge in Florida ruled that the Labor Department lacks authority to issue regulations governing the program.
The program is particularly important to the seafood industry. Under a rule negotiated by the late Sen. Ted Stevens, the industry is partially exempt from quotas limiting the number of H-2B workers into the country, meaning it can bring in an unlimited number of highly specialized workers to oversee the processing of delicate fish roe -- mostly salmon and some herring and pollock -- favored by Asian consumers. The program allowed 628 foreign workers to come to Alaska in fiscal year 2014, more than half of whom were involved in processing roe.
On Friday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined a bipartisan group of 13 senators in signing letters calling for a restart in processing of H-2B visas.
"The H-2B program is a necessity for businesses across the country, such as seafood, hospitality, tourism, forestry and other seasonal industries," the letters said. They noted that the court decision "did not require that [the department] shut the H-2B program down."
A statement from the Labor Department said the court ruling in effect forced it to stop processing visas and it is taking action to restart the program as soon as possible.
In Alaska, top applicants to the visa program last year included seafood processors and a company called Diamonds International of Alaska, which operates shops in Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan and received approval to bring in close to 90 workers, nearly all of them sales associates. Calls to the company were not returned.
Erickson said his fish-processing company needs the program because it's been hard to find the requisite number of domestic workers. Erickson received approval last year for visas to fill 100 slime-line positions.
"We know how difficult it can be to fill fish plants that are wet and cold," he said. "We do everything we can to draw from within the town and the state, but it's never quite enough. If it's not reinstated, maybe I'll go down and scrape fish myself."