Leisure Industry Considers New Idea (For It)—Hiring Americans!
By Joe Guzzardi

For most Americans, cherry blossoms, warmer days and longer nights mark spring’s arrival.

In the patriotic immigration reform movement, however, we know spring is here when the Chamber of Commerce and small businesses start to whine about the lack of seasonal workers and the urgent need to issue more H-2B visas.

You know what will happen if the visas aren’t forthcoming—beds won’t get made, drinks won’t get poured, tables won’t be cleared and fruit will rot in the fields!

After a while—like ten years—this becomes comically boring to read about. None of it ever comes true.

But as indicated by a recent New York Times story (originally introduced to you by Brenda Walker in her blog here), the Main Stream Media never finds it too tedious to write about.[Businesses Face Cut In Immigrant Work Force, By Katie Zezima, New York Times, March 14, 2008]

Interestingly, Zezima’s Times story takes us back to Cape Cod, the scene of two 2004 columns I wrote debunking the claim that no visas equals no boiled lobsters. Read them here and here. (And hear Patti Page sing “Old Cape Codâ€