SIDE BARS

The service was prompt and neighborly, with a smile impossibly huge. But the English was delightfully broken, a world away from Downeast, whenever Denisse Olivos asked patrons at Food & Co. in York for their order. Olivos, a college student from Peru, secured a four month visa to work here over the winter on what was her summer break.

She is one of a few thousand foreigners who arrive in New Hampshire and Maine each year to top off a seasonal labor pool that is critical for the states’ tourism-dependent economies.

The nonimmigrant workers get plenty in return, including a rich cultural experience to match a pay check. "I can speak with another person and improve my English," said Olivos, 18, who is studying to become a translator. "Maybe I come back to Maine." Employers get people for jobs that produce few if any applicants from help-wanted ads.

"It’s a tough industry out there," said Tim Lindsey, general manager of the Best Western Seabrook Inn. "A lot of people do not want to do this type of work."

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Difficulties Hiring Foreign Help?

It can also be tough getting nonimmigrant seasonal workers under the H2B visa program. Some tourism-related businesses in Maine and New Hampshire saw their applications rejected last year and in 2004 because of a congressional cap on the number of people.

The ceiling on the 66,000 annual cap approaches quickly, especially with other regions filing for the seasonal help before the Northeast’s window for doing so opens. Businesses are prohibited from applying for the workers 120 days before they are needed. Lindsey at the Seabrook hotel got squeezed out of a petition for 15 workers.

A dozen or a half dozen workers may not sound like many, but it can put a crimp in daily operations, forcing managers to assign overtime to a short staff.

The H2B visa window looks fine for the 2006 summer season, according to tourism experts and businesses interviewed for this story.

A burden was lifted last year when Congress passed the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act, which congressional delegations from northern New England supported.

The move was designed to create a fair allocation of the visas. Its biggest change was an exemption for returning workers.

"You can’t offer the type of services people expect without a qualified work force," said U.S. Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H.

The exemption expires Oct. 1, but congressional delegations from New Hampshire and Maine are working to achieve a long-term allowance. Bradley is one of the sponsors to make the exemption permanent. U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is a sponsor of similar legislation in the Senate.

Bradley said the H2B visa law, and its pending reforms, could be a model for some of the immigration regulations that have been under intense scrutiny in Washington since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The petition for a nonimmigrant seasonal worker, known as a Form I-129, is processed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Employers must file a request with their temporary labor certificate from the U.S. Department of Labor that U.S. workers are unavailable. The department serves only in an advisory capacity to Citizenship and Immigration Services.

All employees, local or international, are subject to state and federal labor laws, including the going wage.

One of the first steps is providing proof, such as taking out help-wanted ads. The base filing fee is $190, plus a $150 fraud prevention and detection fee that was created last year with the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act.

"It’s a fairly long process. It takes several months," said Lindsey. He hires an agency to file the petitions and necessary paperwork with state and federal agencies.

Seasonal help comes in many forms, from the H2B visa to student work visas.

Deb Windemiller, who has owned Oceanside Inn in Hampton for 28 years, has used foreign help for eight or 10 years for housekeeping, maintenance and clerk work.

She and her husband, Skip, turned to the nonimmigrant visas because they found U.S. high school and college students sometimes have to return to class the second, third or fourth week of August, while the season extends well into September.

"It’s a lot of fun," Windemiller said. "We feel like we have new children every year."