Immigration Policies Creating Havoc for Horsemen

Sarah K. Andrew Photo 

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It was 7:30 on a Tuesday evening and 70-year-old Indiana-based trainer Gary Patrick was still hard at work. His day had started at 4:30, and he wasn't sure when it would end.

“This has been nothing but pure hell,” Patrick said. “If somebody offered us enough money for this outfit we'd just walk away. I've got enough money I don't have to do this anymore. This thing is going to drive me out of the business.”

Patrick was in a foul mood, but you could hardly blame him. Like many trainers, immigration policies under the Trump administration have created a major void when it comes to what has always been a vital labor source for horse racing–foreign workers. Patrick, who has 58 horses between his stable at Indiana Grand and his farm, is down to two reliable employees. That has forced Patrick and his wife, Cindy, 58, to put in grueling hours virtually every day as they are doing the work of four or five people, something they have to do to keep their operation going.

Patrick is far from alone. Trainers across the map say they are in crisis mode as help has become almost impossible to find.

“I was talking to a Belmont trainer and he said there used to be people coming around the barn looking for a job all the time and now no one comes,” said attorney Will Velie, who specializes in immigration issues and is the president of the company Horseman Labor Solutions. “There's nobody around anymore.”

Patrick said that he had three good helpers that came each year from Mexico when the Indiana Grand meet began in April and had never before had any problems securing the paperwork needed to make them legal. This year, they have not been allowed to enter the country.

There are a handful of reasons why Patrick and others are having such a hard time finding available foreign workers, but two stand out:

1. Trainers have long relied on H-2B visas to legally bring in workers. The visas allow employers to hire foreigners on a temporary basis. Workers may stay in the U.S. for up to 10 months and then are required to return to their native countries for two months. Only 66,000 H-2B visas are allowed nationwide each year, 33,000 each at two points in the year. However, in December, Congress chose not to renew a provision that allowed people who had received an H-2B visa in the past to not count against that cap. That's no longer the case, which has, effectively, caused a dramatic reduction in the numbers of immigrants able to secure the visas.

2. It's no secret that many stables will hire illegal immigrants. But far fewer of those individuals are coming around the backstretch looking for work, worried that by doing so they will expose themselves to immigration authorities and risk deportation. Even legal workers worry about getting deported.

“It's a very tense atmosphere back there,” said trainer Rick Violette, Jr., who also heads the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association. “They kind of work and they go home. They don't want to get caught up in any kind of sweep. Sometimes it's not so simple anymore as showing your license or immigration card and they say, 'Ok no problem.'”

Velie says factors have combined to make for the “most chronic shortage of workers I have ever seen on the backstretch.”

“The economy is at full employment so the companies that in the past didn't need H-2B visas all came out of the woodwork looking for them,” he added. “The first week that the filing window opened up, which was Jan. 1, there were 90,000 applications for those visas. That was on the first day. If you applied on the first day you had a one in three chance of getting one. If you waited a week you had no chance. You have to combine that with the executive orders Trump issued that made essentially anybody here without documentation a priority for deportation and called for a huge increase in enforcement. It's what I call a pincer movement, no H-2B's available and a woeful lack of other people willing to accept the work. There is a perfect storm of worker unavailability.”

Trainers have had to learn how to do without. For Patrick, that means doing the work himself. For others, it means asking one groom to rub five horses instead of three. It could also mean hiring people you otherwise would not, individuals with no experience working with horses and/or checkered backgrounds. In Maine, where hotels and restaurants rely on foreign workers during tourist season, Gov. Paul R. LePage conditionally commuted the prison sentences of some low-level offenders to help fill the need for seasonal workers.

“I have my assistant trainer doing grooming jobs and even myself, I am doing lot more than I did five years ago,” trainer Jim Bond said. “We're short and we were never short before. The biggest thing is we can't expand. I wanted to build a breeding barn at our farm and I don't dare do it. There's no way I'd have enough staff to do it today. Ten years ago it would have been a super idea.”

Patrick said he had just hired two American workers that his daughter found for him on Facebook. He was skeptical that they would do the job and his fears were justified when one, on the second day of work, did not show up because her “grandmother was sick.”

Not only do trainers say they want to hire Americans, they are required to put in every effort to do so. In order to qualify for H-2B visas trainers must advertise job openings in local papers and hire any American who comes forward willing to work. Bond said that in 15 years of doing so he has had only two applications, one from a mortician and another from a hair dresser. Neither one worked out.

“The guy could dig graves but that didn't qualify him to work with horses,” Bond said. “As for the hairdresser, she seemed like a very nice lady but my horses don't need their hair dressed.”

“Americans have more things they can do, more opportunities and they don't want to be part of the manual workforce,” trainer Dale Romans said. “So we need immigrant manual labor in our industry. So does every industry that involves a massive amount of manual labor.”

Many hope that Trump will soften his stance over time. Others worry that the problem could only get worse. If enforcement officers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement start raiding backstretches with any regularity they will no doubt leave the with buses filled with illegal workers.

No matter their political stance, many trainers argue that as long as there is a need for foreign workers and those workers are not taking jobs away from Americans and are law-abiding taxpayers, then they should be allowed in.

“There should be a pathway for the people who are honest, hard-working people and just want to work,” Bond said. “Just like my great grandfather, all our ancestors came here somehow, someway from some place else. There has to be a pathway, to help farms, restaurants, people at the racetrack. In the horse industry, it's hard, tough, work and nobody today wants to get their hands dirty.”

The problems of the many industries that rely on foreign help have not gone unnoticed in Washington. According to Velie, Congress has passed a provision that would immediately increase the number of H-2B visas available. He said that prior to Trump, Congress would push through changes in the availability of visas without seeking presidential approval. That is no longer the case. Not only has Congress turned the matter over to Trump, Trump has not taken any action on it.

“They gave Trump the ball and all he has to do is put in the end zone,” Velie said. “It's been a month and a half and he has not passed it. The solution is there.”

In the meantime, Gary Patrick will continue to put in 15-hour days and look for Americans willing to work for him, at least ones who will show up on time and not use the “sick grandmother” excuse. He doesn't know what else to do.

 

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