The city of Branson, Missouri has built itself around being the midwest getaway destination. With Disney and Universal theme parks on the coasts, Branson has filled that gap for midwesterners unprepared to make the long journey.
The community features numerous travel destinations, from theme parks like Silver Dollar City to nightly performance shows — after all, who can miss going to see Yakov Smirnoff or Ray Stevens?
In the heart of real conservative Missouri, Branson went 78% for Trump and only 18% for Hillary Clinton. You’d think that a community this conservative would be cheering the president on, right?
Well, it turns out they didn’t quite expect the results of the President’s travel bans and anti-immigrant measures.
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A change out of Washington D.C. has businesses in Branson scrambling before the season.
An exemption in the H-2B Visa program – allowing temporary workers from other countries to come into tourist destinations – could leave hundreds of jobs in Branson unfilled in 2017, many of which are vital to the city.
"There is just such a tremendous shortage [of workers] in this area,” says Chateau on the Lake general manager, Stephen Marshall. “It's not that we don't want to hire locals, there's just not enough."
The Chateau, like many Branson businesses, relies on foreign workers to fill positions like service work, lawn car and housekeeping.
The tourism community has long relied on transitional labor to come in for the summer and do the tourism work, and now they are discovering that won’t happen.
“It's going to be a huge problem,” says Marshall. “It's not just Chateau on the Lake that has that issue, it's many other places in town."
Marshall continues by noting that they struggle to attract local workers, and there simply aren’t enough of them to fill the jobs at hand for tourism season. And, in his mind, raising the wages of these jobs? That isn’t a solution either:
“I would tell you, with a lot of confidence, let's say I get approved from corporate office that we want to pay room attendants $15 an hour,” Marshall says.
“There's people that just don't want to do that work,” he says. “They just don't want to do it.”
Despite the success of tourism and the wide Christian community, Branson’s pay quality for residents hasn’t been so good. According to Sperling’s best places and the IRS, Branson’s median wages for a family significantly trails the national at $38,425 — the national average is $53,482.
This wage concern has put up real pressure on the community, where housing has become VRBO or AirBnB rather than sell to the marketplace, resulting in more residents struggling with “by the week” housing arrangements.
While wage depression and local housing problems would seemingly make an increase in pay potentially popular, the local Republican community is distressed about what happens next.
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Brian Stallings, executive director of Jesus Was Homeless, a nonprofit organization based in Branson, said there’s been a “perfect storm” that’s been funneling more working-class people into extended-stay hotels.
There’s a lack of public transportation and affordable housing, he said, and the jobs in the area are seasonal and don’t pay much.
If an usher at one of the entertainment shows doesn’t have a car, he has to live within walking distance of his job, Stallings said. And that job might not pay enough for the usher to save up a deposit for an apartment, he said.
“It’s a challenge for people to escape,” Stallings said. “They get trapped into the weekly motels.”
And now the community must decide what happens next. Finding themselves cut off from workers thanks to President Trump, the overwhelmingly Republican community find themselves with two choices: raise wages and attract local workers, or find another loophole to keep their wages low?
