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Program Checks Alien Workers

posted 11:27 pm Mon March 10, 2008 - Bedford Co., VA

tags: migrant • workers

In January controversy erupted in Bedford County after a construction company proposed building apartments for their seasonal migrant workers.

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The Board of Supervisors is expected to hold a public hearing on the issue. People who live around the property worried about their safety and their property values. But, those seasonal workers are much more common than people might think. Whether just off of Perrowville Road or in rural Nelson County, seasonal workers live in our area, lots of them actually.

Libby Whitley, Mid-Atlantic Solutions - "I would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 12 thousand workers come in to Virginia every year on H2 Visas."

H2 being the kind of Visa that allows a worker to come into this country around April and leave in November.

Whitley - "The come in, they do their job and they go home."

Libby Whitley is the president of a company that places those workers -- Mid-Atlantic Solutions.

David St. John, May Bros., Inc. - "We need employees to do our construction work in this area."

David St. John is the President of a company that hires them, May Bros., Inc. He says there are simply not enough Americans that want to do the type of labor he needs done.

St. John - "We attempt to hire local people and then if we don't have luck than we turn to the H-2B program."

A Federal Program that puts migrant workers through a thorough background check, including ones from the CIA and from the FBI (web) .

Whitley - "I bet 90 percent of the population in any of the Central Virginia Counties hasn't ever gone through the kind of background clearance that these H2 workers have gone through."

And their host company is responsible for finding them housing. They live in homes all around the area.

Whitley - "I will say that we have never had a problem."

But this type of work is the solution to the problems these migrant workers face.

Whitley - "These are bread winners. Men and woman who are coming up here to work, earning money and taking it home."

There are about 250,000 H-2 seasonal workers that come into this country every year. Whitley estimates that is the equivalent of three months worth of illegal immigrants that sneak into the country.

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