Sad state of affairs! It was 133 years ago when our great grandfather came to the United States from Finland. After looking around in the United States, he came to Lyons Colorado and found that workers were quarrying sandstone for foundations, walls and sidewalks. He started as a bookkeeper in the stone business, and then in 1892 he purchased our existing quarry that we have used ever since. At the turn of the century, there were 600 workers in the quarries using bars, hammers, wedges and chisels to remove the stone from the sandstone formation and cut it to size by hand. That is the same methodology that we use today with the addition of a forklift to move the materials and bring them to our production site. The Lyons sandstone and Colorado Buff sandstone are a hard quarzitic stone that can be used in all types of environments, including extremes of freeze and thaw and saltwater. It is neutral and stands up to wear and deterioration for centuries. In our many years in business we have shipped our stone nationwide from California to New York and into Canada. It is always in demand because of its quality. Needless to say it is a very labor intensive material to remove to cut, lift, handle and ship. For our quarriers it is a hot, cold, dirty, heavy, back breaking work to produce the stone by hand. In the last 15 years we have advertised to fill H2b visas and were required by the Department of Labor to hire anyone for the job that could meet the qualifications. There has not been a single applicant from people that live in the United States during those 15 years. Our company has used the Department of Labor and USCIS H2B visas since the time of their inception. We have always complied with their stringent requirements and regulations to employ workers from Mexico. We have been employing the same group of workers for generations because of their expertise in the extraction of our sandstone. This year, 2023, we applied for workers’ visas costing our company $20,000 for two applications with eight applicants per visa. In the lottery for visas, which has alphabetical lottery divisions of A through G, we were put in the groupings of D & E. All of the available visas were dispersed before the end of the C group. This year the Department of Labor and USCIS added an additional 33,000 visas with a percentage being from the golden triangle designated in El Salvador, Guatemala And Honduras. The first visa application was returned to us without being filled. We took a shot in the dark and tried for some of the golden triangle workers. We were approved for eight workers but when talking with the recruiters, we were advised that they had no designations for quarry work with any of the golden triangle workers. We looked at all aspects of bringing some of those workers to the United States but the logistics were not good, additionally the recruiters had a hard time finding any willing workers. The problem with inexperienced workers is that it will take at least two years to make them proficient in the extraction of stone. Recently we lost our primary quarry instructor, due to health problems, making the training of the golden triangle visa people essentially impossible. Having no work experience in the United states nor English language skills, such workers cannot communicate their needs for housing, transportation and basic living requirements. At this time, our five generation business is struggling to survive because we cannot open our quarries without workers. Our workers are seasonal because of the severe winters we have here in Colorado with our quarries at the 7000-foot altitude. Luckily, we are getting by with our skeleton crew of our local stone cutters, an accumulation of stock from last year and being able to buy some materials from the other local quarries. But that scenario will not last us for the full season and we will have to continue refusing jobs and opportunities that would keep our business in operation. That being the case, we would not be in operation and would have to close the doors! With the failure of the H2b visa program to provide workers, the threat of permanently ceasing operations and losing livelihoods exists for the thousands of businesses that qualified to use H2b workers. This is the uncertainty for such businesses every year dealing with the arbitrary, irrelevant, unceasing changes to H2b requirements. As is likely with most of those businesses dependent on H2b visa workers, our workers in Mexico are ready, willing, and able to come and work in our quarries but are prevented from doing so due to the needless lack of visas. Please ask Senator Durbin to send the bill on Unrestricted Visas: The worker/beneficiaries can be new or returning workers from any country on the State Department List of Eligible H2b countries or Returning Workers: A worker that was issued an H2b visa in any of the prior three fiscal years (2022, 2021, 2020) from any country on the State Department List of Eligible H2b countries. The returning worker program is the key to solving the problem, it has been in place a couple of years in the past 10 years, and it works with the existing program very well. And it leaves the existing program with the cap to process new workers that have not been in the system before. For the foreign workers, it is a way to make a very good income compared to wages in their home country, but this takes dedication to leave home for nine months out of the year and not be able to be with their wives, children and other family members! Please support any bill that makes the H2b program work for our small business and the hard working employers in the quarry, landscaping, building, fishing and service trades and all of the many other thousands of businesses that rely on the H2b visa program. The H2B visa program is truly a win, win, win for American businesses, the foreign workers and all American citizens. Because the foreign workers are vetted and the USCIS and Department of Labor knows where they are located and who they are working for, they can easily be tracked. Foreign workers also pay local, state and Social Security taxes. They generate income for local businesses by their purchases and fill the jobs that are badly needed in America that no one else wants to do. Sincerely, Michael Loukonen GM/VP/ 4 th generation Owners of Loukonen Bros. Stone Company 12993 N. Foothills Hwy. Longmont, CO. 80503 (303) 823-6268
Dismiss
