US hotels face worker shortage amid looming immigration curbs
A U.S. crackdown on foreign-born workers could spell trouble for the hotel and hospitality industry, which has lobbied for years to expand the pathways for immigration to the United States to help fill over 1 million job vacancies.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would issue an immigration order soon, following a social media post in which he cited labor issues in the farm and hotel industries stemming from his immigration crackdown. But on Friday, the Washington Post reported that no such policy changes were under way, according to three people with knowledge of the administration's immigration policies.
In 2024, travel supported the jobs of 15 million U.S. workers and directly employed 8 million, with approximately one-third of those workers immigrants, according to the U.S. Travel Association and American Hotel and Lodging Association. There are about 1 million job openings in 2025.
Hotels and resorts have struggled to find enough Americans willing to work hospitality jobs, including seasonal or temporary jobs at ski resorts and amusement parks.
The leisure and hospitality industries have quit rates higher than all other industries.
The accommodation and food services subsector has experienced a quit rate consistently around or above 4% since July 2022, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.About 71% of the hotels that had job openings were unable to fill them despite active searches, according to a 2024 survey conducted by AHLA and Hireology, an employee management platform.
U.S. Travel and AHLA have lobbied Congress for broader pathways for legal immigration in an effort to close these gaps.
The industry's priority was to push for expanding the H-2B visa program, which was capped at 66,000 visas a year, to bring more seasonal workers to the United States.
In March 2024, then-President Joe Biden signed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, which authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to increase the number of H-2B temporary nonagricultural workers if the agency determines there are not enough American workers 'willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary nonagricultural labor.'
DHS and the Department of Labor in December published a joint temporary final rule increasing the limit on H-2B non-immigrant visas for fiscal year 2025.
The industry also supported legislation that looked to make it easier for temporary workers to return to the U.S. and allow people seeking asylum to work as soon as 30 days after applying for asylum.
'One of the most important issues in our industry for time and eternity has been workforce ... and the need for comprehensive immigration reform,' Hilton Worldwide CEO Chris Nassetta said at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in January, according to a report by Travel Weekly.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
18 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
The Take: Why is Trump meeting Putin in Alaska?
What does the Alaska summit hold for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin? The two presidents will meet Friday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not invited. As Russia is gaining ground in Ukraine, what could a deal look like, and who will pay the price? In this episode: Osama Bin Javaid (@osamabinjavaid), Al Jazeera Correspondent Episode credits: This episode was produced by Diana Ferrero, Amy Walters, Sonia Bhagat, and Noor Wazwaz, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Melanie Marich, Chloe K. Li, Julia Muldavin, Farhan Rafid, Kisaa Zehra, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Sarí el-Khalili. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
As Trump splits from India, is the US abandoning its pivot to Asia?
New Delhi, India – When United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday, their summit will be followed closely not only in both those countries, Europe and Ukraine – but also more than 10,000km (6,200 miles) away, in New Delhi. Since the end of the Cold War, India has juggled a historically strong relationship with Russia and rapidly blossoming ties with the US. New Delhi's relations with Washington grew particularly strong under the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, and remained that way during Trump's first term and under Joe Biden. At the heart of that US warmth towards India, say analysts, was its bet on New Delhi as a balancing force against Beijing, as China's economic, military and strategic heft in the Asia Pacific region grew. With Soviet communism history, and China, the US's biggest strategic rival, Washington increased its focus on Asia – including through the Quad, a grouping also including fellow democracies India, Australia and Japan. But a decade after Obama famously described the US and India as 'best partners', they appear to be anything but. Trump has imposed a 50 percent tariff on Indian imports, among the highest on any country's products. Half of that penalty is for India's purchases of Russian oil during its ongoing war with Ukraine – something that the Biden administration encouraged India to do to keep global crude prices under control. Meanwhile, China – which buys even more Russian oil than India – has received a reprieve from high US tariffs for now, as Washington negotiates a trade deal with New Delhi. That contrast has prompted questions over whether Trump's approach towards China, on the one hand, and traditional friends like India on the other, marks a broader shift away from the US pivot to Asia. Troubles for India, and Modi Since the early 2000s, successive governments in New Delhi have embraced closer ties with Washington, with its stocks rising in the US as an emerging strategic partner in security, trade and technology. Trump made that relationship personal – with Modi. During Trump's first term, he shared the stage twice in public rallies with Modi, as they also exchanged frequent bear hugs and described each other as friends. But none of that could save New Delhi when Trump hit India with tariffs only matched by the levies issued against goods from Brazil. 'The tariff moves have triggered the most serious rupture in the US-India relations in decades,' said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For months after Trump threatened tariffs on Indian imports, New Delhi tried to placate the US president, refusing to get drawn into a war of words. That has now changed, with India accusing the US of hypocrisy – pointing out that it still trades with Russia, and that Washington had previously wanted New Delhi to buy Russian crude. 'One thing is clear: Trust in the United States has eroded sharply in recent days, casting a long shadow over the bilateral relationship,' Vaishnav told Al Jazeera. To Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, the crisis in the relationship also reflects a dramatic turn in the personal equation between Modi and Trump. The state of ties, he said, is 'a result of a clash of personalities between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi'. India has previously faced the threat of US sanctions for its close friendship with Russia, when it decided to buy S-400 missile defence systems from Moscow. But in 2022, under the Biden administration, it secured a waiver from those proposed sanctions. 'Not long ago, India could avoid sanctions despite purchasing S-400 weapon systems from Russia. However, now, India's policy of multi-alignment clashes with President Trump's transactional approach to geopolitics,' said Donthi. To be sure, he pointed out, America's Cold War history of bonhomie with Pakistan has meant that 'a certain distrust of the US is embedded in the Indian strategic firmament'. The Trump administration's recent cosiness with Pakistan, with its army chief visiting the US this year, even getting a rare meeting with the president at the White House, will likely have amplified those concerns in New Delhi. But through ups and downs in India-US ties over the years, a key strategic glue has held them close over the past quarter century: shared worries about the rise of China. 'A certain bipartisan consensus existed in the US regarding India because of its long-term strategic importance, especially in balancing China,' said Donthi. Now, he said, 'the unpredictable Trump presidency disrupted the US's approach of 'strategic altruism' towards India'. It is no longer clear to Asian partners of the US, say experts, whether Washington is as focused on building alliances in their region as it once said it was. Turn from Asia Under the Obama administration in 2011, the US adopted what was known as the 'Rebalance to Asia' policy, aimed at committing more diplomatic, economic and military resources to the Asia Pacific region, increasingly seen as the world's economic and geopolitical centre of gravity. This meant deeper engagement with treaty allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia, strengthening security ties with emerging partners such as India and Vietnam, and pushing forward trade initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The idea was to shape a regional order that could balance China's rise. During Trump's first term, the economic leg that gave the pivot its weight hollowed out. The US withdrawal from the TPP in early 2017 removed the signature trade pillar, leaving behind a strategy that leaned heavily on military cooperation and less on binding economic partnerships. Yet, he refrained from the bulldozing negotiations that have shaped his approach to tariffs, even with allies like Japan and South Korea, and from the kind of tariffs Trump has imposed now on India. 'There is currently a period of churn and uncertainty, after which clarity will emerge,' Donthi said. 'There might be some cautious rebalancing in the short term from the Asian powers, who will wait for more clarity.' India, which, unlike Japan and South Korea, has never been a treaty ally to the US – or any other country – might already be taking steps towards that rebalancing. Russia-India-China troika? Faced with Trump's tariff wrath, India has been engaged in hectic diplomacy of its own. Its national security adviser, Ajit Doval, visited Moscow earlier this month and met Putin. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to travel to the Russian capital later this month. Also in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit New Delhi. And at the end of the month, Modi will travel to China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, his first trip to the country in seven years. India has also indicated that it is open to considering the revival of a Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral mechanism, after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed the platform's resurrection. The concept of trilateral cooperation was first proposed in the 1990s and formally institutionalised in 2002, an idea Lavrov credited to the late Yevgeny Primakov, former chair of the Russian International Affairs Council. Although the RIC met regularly in the years following its creation, there has been a gap in recent times, with the last meeting of RIC leaders in 2019, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. India's Modi faces some 'very difficult choices', said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation. 'Clearly, India is not going to turn on Russia, a very special partner. And India does not turn on its friends.' But doubling down on its strategic independence from the US – or multi-alignment, as India describes it – could come with its costs, if Trump decides to add on even more tariffs or sanctions. 'The best outcome for India immediately is the Russians and Ukrainians agree to a ceasefire,' said Kugelman, 'because at the end of the day, Trump is pressuring India as a means of pressuring Russia.' Even as questions rise over Washington's pivot to Asia under Trump, such a rebalance will not be easy for countries like India, say experts. Ultimately, they say, the US will find its longtime partners willing to return to the fold if it decides to reinvest in those relationships. The cost of a rebalance An RIC troika would ultimately be 'more symbolic than substantive', Kugelman said. That's because one of the sides of that triangle is 'quite small and fragile: India-China ties'. While there have been 'notable easing of tensions' in recent months, 'India and China remain strategic competitors,' added Kugelman. After four years of an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff along their Himalayan border, they finally agreed to withdraw troops last year, with Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting in Kazan. But 'they continue to have a long disputed border', Kugelman said, and trust between the Asian giants remains low. Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment agreed. 'There may be opportunistic venues and moments where the countries' interests converge. But I think, beyond defence and energy, Russia has little to offer India,' he said. 'With China, while we may see a thaw in economic relations, it's difficult to see a path to resolving broader security and geostrategic disputes.' Jon Danilowicz, a retired diplomat who worked in the US State Department, said that a total breakdown of the US-India partnership is in neither's interest. 'The cooperation in other areas will continue, perhaps with less open enthusiasm than had been the case in recent years,' he said. Meanwhile, the Trump tariffs could help Modi domestically. 'Trump's hardball tactics could bolster Modi's domestic standing. They highlight Washington's unreliability, allowing Modi to frame himself as standing firm in the face of the US pressure,' said Vaishnav. Modi had been facing pressure from the opposition over the ceasefire with Pakistan after four days of military hostilities in May, after 26 civilians were killed in an attack by gunmen in Kashmir in April. The opposition has accused Modi of not going harder and longer at Pakistan because of pressure from Trump, who has claimed repeatedly that he brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad – a claim India has denied. 'Any further appearance of yielding – this time to the US – could be politically costly. Resisting Trump reinforces Modi's image as a defender of national pride,' added Vaishnav. Many analysts have said they see Trump's tariffs also as the outcome of as-yet unsuccessful India-US trade talks, with New Delhi reluctant to open up the country's agriculture and dairy sectors that are politically sensitive for the Indian government. Almost half of India's population depends on farming for its livelihood. Modi has in recent days said that he won't let the interests of Indian farmers suffer, 'even though I know I will have to pay a personal cost'. 'He is demonstrating defiance to the domestic electorate,' said Donthi, of the International Crisis Group. Ultimately, though, he said, both India and the US would benefit if they strike a compromise that allows them to stop the slide in ties. 'But the warmth and friendliness won't be present, and this will be evident for some time,' Donthi said.
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump promises to ‘save' jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai
United States President Donald Trump has renewed his promise to 'save' jailed Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is on trial for alleged national security crimes over his pro-democracy activism and antipathy towards China's Communist Party. 'I'm going to do everything I can to save him. I'm going to do everything … His name has already entered the circle of things that we're talking about, and we'll see what we can do,' Trump told Fox News Radio in the US. Trump's remarks came as closing arguments in Lai's high-profile trial. Closing arguments have been pushed from Friday to Monday after Lai's lawyer said he had experienced heart palpitations. The delay marks the second in as many days, after Hong Kong courts were closed due to bad weather. Trump previously pledged to rescue Lai during an interview last October, just weeks before his election as president, and had said he would '100 percent get him out'. Lai is one of the most prominent Hong Kongers to be charged under the city's draconian 2020 national security law, and his cause has made international headlines. The 77-year-old is a longtime opponent of China's Communist Party thanks to his ownership of Apple Daily, a now-shuttered pro-democracy tabloid newspaper. He is facing two counts of 'colluding with foreign forces' and a separate charge of sedition in the long-running national security trial that began in December 2023. If found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He has always protested his innocence. Lai was first arrested in 2020, just months after Beijing imposed the new national security law on Hong Kong, which criminalised the city's pro-democracy movement and categorised public protests as acts of secession, subversion and terrorism. The law was later expanded in 2024 to include further crimes such as espionage and sabotage. Lai has been in detention continuously since December 2020 and is serving separate prison sentences for participating in a banned candlelight vigil and committing 'fraud' on an office lease agreement. He has spent more than 1,600 days in solitary confinement, according to the United Kingdom-based Hong Kong Watch, despite his age and health complications. Lai was also denied the lawyer of his choice during trial and access to independent medical care. A verdict in his trial is expected within days. Thank you, President Trump, for your support for Jimmy Lai at this critical time. "I'm going to do everything I can to save [Jimmy Lai]. I'm going to do everything…His name has already entered the circle of things that we're talking about, and we'll see what we can do. I… — #FreeJimmyLai (@SupportJimmyLai) August 14, 2025
