Trump's guest-worker ban creates challenges for racing industry

An executive order issued Monday by the administration of President Donald Trump will bar the issuance of guest-worker visas used by thousands of backstretch workers until the end of this year.

The executive order, which prohibits the issuance of a broad category of visas available for foreign workers, has caused concern in the horse racing industry due to the sport’s reliance on a type of visa, the H-2B visa, to fill positions on the backstretch for grooms and hotwalkers. Under the order, no workers will be deported, but no worker currently residing outside of the United States may apply for the visas, with some exceptions.

“As of today, nothing will get you across the border,” Alex Waldrop, chief executive officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which coordinates federal lobbying efforts on behalf of the racing industry, said Tuesday morning.

Immigration has been a critical political issue for the current White House administration, which has attempted to tighten the screws on legal and illegal immigration several times over the past three years. Several of those attempts have led to declines in the number of H-2B visas available for guest workers, but those efforts also have included language that allows industries with seasonal workers to petition the Department of Homeland Security for exceptions. As a result, the DHS, in consultation with the Labor Department – and under lobbying from large business interests – has allowed for “temporary increases” in H-2B allocations twice in the past two years.

According to Waldrop, the order issued Monday includes the same language, and he said that he expects a coalition of industries that have banded together to lobby for those exceptions to press their case again later this year.

Because the Monday order also affects the issuance of H-1B visas, which are available to skilled guest workers, Waldrop said that the number of industries affected by the order will lead to a “much larger coalition” of business interests that will seek help in getting the order modified or withdrawn.

“This is obviously not focused on the horse racing industry,” Waldrop said. “This now has Big Tech concerned, it has a lot of other industries worried. So in this case there is a much larger alliance. So the good news is that we have a lot of allies. The bad news is that this is something that the Trump administration feels very strongly about.”

The architects of the Trump administration’s immigration policies generally believe that the issuance of guest-worker visas saps the U.S. labor market. Racing officials and immigration lawyers contend that it is extremely difficult to find U.S. citizens to take jobs as grooms and hotwalkers, due to widespread cultural changes.

The issuance of an H-2B visa comes with a number of requirements, including a floor on wages in which pay cannot go below the wage earned by a U.S. worker in the same job. The visas are issued on a 10-month basis. The order issued Monday exempts H-2B workers employed in the production of “food or fiber,” granting a wide exemption to agricultural communities across the United States.