GOP Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, oft mentioned as a potential Donald Trump running mate, has a new beef with the omnibus spending bill his colleagues rushed to passage last December: it includes an increase in the number of visas available for hiring low-skilled foreign workers for temporary employment. It is exactly the type of visa, known as an H-2B visa, that Trump has used to prioritize hiring hundreds of foreign workers at a Florida resort, among other properties. Seung Min Kim reports on a letter Sessions sent to his colleagues about his latest immigration obsession:
Sessions was irate after the omnibus bill that hastily passed Congress in December included a provision that would essentially quadruple the number of H-2B visas available. The letter, obtained by POLITICO, is an early marker from Sessions against doing so again in this year’s government funding bills.
“It is my understanding that certain members of the Senate seek to make this ‘returning worker’ exemption permanent,” Sessions wrote in the letter, addressed to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the panel’s top Democrat. “Doing so would be a grave error. Fundamentally, a cap must be a cap.”
Currently, the number of H-2B visas is capped at 66,000 per year, but last year’s spending bill includes an exemption for foreign workers who have used the H-2B in the past three fiscal cycles, potentially quadrupling the eligible number of foreign workers. Yet the Congressional Budget Office has also estimated the change would only amount to an increase of 8,000 workers this year.
But the particulars may not be as important as the fact that a top Republican senator who’s supposed to be buds with Trump is furious over a potential H-2B expansion. Perhaps some enterprising reporter can ask Trump what he thinks of Sessions’ latest war on immigration—or what Sessions thinks of Trump’s defense of H-2B visas.
“I want to protect our borders,” he said. “I also want to protect our businesses. They have to come in legally, and then they go back. Certain areas, in really successful areas, where we can’t get help, many people do that. That’s a good thing.