Carnival & Fair News

April 29-May 1, a coalition of fairs and carnival companies visited Washington D.C. to personally lobby legislators to support P4 Visas. Organized by the Outdoor Amusement Business Association (OABA), in conjunction with the IAFE and NICA, nine industry leaders participated in the mission to meet with office holders and their staff to garner co-signers to the P4 Visa Bill. The Carnivals Are Real Entertainment Act – i.e. the CARE Act – which was introduced last year and reintroduced in February seeks to reclassify the visa status of midway workers from H-2B to P4, a new category within the P-Visa program, which regulates nonimmigrant foreign guest workers.

Workforce shortages are often cited as the leading challenge faced by the carnival and mobile entertainment industry. These businesses rely on a mix of domestic workers and temporary foreign labor through the H-2B visa program, but for more than a decade the proportion of foreign and domestic labor has been reversed.  Today, H-2B workers outnumber Americans about three to one.

H-2B visas operate under what unanimous consensus deems an outdated cap system, limiting the number of available workers to approximately 66,000 per year, split into two separate batches six months apart. The real need is likely three times that much and the cap system is also costly and inefficient, leaving many carnival companies and other businesses short-handed and scrambling for workers each season.

New Classification

The OABA and other H-2B advocacy groups tried a different tact last year by proposing an alternative to the H-2B program, the Carnivals Are Real Entertainment Act, otherwise known as the CARE Act (H. R. 1787). Introduced in both legislative houses and gaining about 80 co-sponsors, the CARE act never reached a committee hearing, but in what was deemed a positive reception by lobbyists, a reinvigorated coalition is trying again this year.

“The P4 Visa bills called the CARE Act in the House and the RIDE Act in the Senate have been reintroduced for the 119th Congress,” said Greg Chiecko, President/CEO, OABA. “The Bill numbers are HR2729 and S1281 respectively. We are actively pursuing those that co-sponsored the bill in the last session to sign on again. We are having good success so far, but we continue to press.”

While it sounds like a carve-out for carnival companies, the CARE Act addresses the labor shortage by allowing mobile entertainment employers to utilize the P nonimmigrant visa classification to secure the temporary seasonal staff they need to survive. The P visas are foreign worker programs for temporary employment, but used for entertainers, artists, athletes and other unique workers.

The P1 visa classification is available for foreign national entertainers coming to the U. S. temporarily; P2 Visas are for nonimmigrant artists and entertainers who work in the U.S. as part of a cultural exchange program, and the P3 classification covers nonimmigrant visa for artists and entertainers who are coming to the United States to participate in a culturally unique program.

All three of the P-Visas allow for support personal like stage hands and sound technicians to receive the same temporary worker status as the entertainers and artists. The acknowledgement is that if the show must go on, entertainers require non-entertainers embedded into the P-Visa program. The new P-4 designation is needed because carnivals are unique and “real entertainment” and should be covered under this nonimmigrant temporary program as opposed to the existing H-2B program.

The CARE Act seeks to “clarify” that mobile entertainment employees are indeed essential support personnel who are an integral part of the performance the P-Visa programs designates as entertainment. It's limited to carnivals or circuses that travel around the United States on a temporary or seasonal basis. “This is not a carve-out,” said Chiecko “It is an adjustment to the proper category our industry should have been in for a long time. We fit the criteria for the P4 category perfectly. So far, there have been no consequential arguments in opposing the P4 language.”

Fair Strong

Recognizing both the logic of the new lobbying initiative and the dire need by their carnival companies, the IAFE has taken a more public stance supporting this year's lobbying effort.

"We are happy to partner with our OABA colleagues on this issue as it impacts us all,” said David Grindle, President/CEO, IAFE. “Sharing the fair side of the issue with legislators, along with Gene Cassidy of the Big E and Shari Black of the Wisconsin State Fair, helped communicate the national importance of this matter. It is an honor to advocate on behalf of the Fair industry."

“The IAFE and the OABA really partnered up in a big way this year to lobby our legislators to fix our employment problem,” said Eugene J. Cassidy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Eastern States Expo. “We've been working with them for years on the H-2B program, but the situation has gotten worse. The resort industries, canneries, and fisheries are all dipping into the H-2B pool. The cap is arbitrary and the CARE Act doesn't take away one American job or cost anything to the taxpayer. It's just changing a classification on a form. In fact it saves jobs, because for every job filled by a foreign laborer, it saves five jobs filled by Americans. ”

Cassidy had been in the initial CARE Act lobbying excursion in October. The most recent trip, which lasted April 29 and May 1st, included two full days of meeting with legislators. He said there were three groups made up of carnival companies, fairs and concessionaires – he said his group met with 21 legislators. The presence of fairs made a theoretical impact with hopefully long term consequences. “Every congressional district in the country has at least one fair. Every fair of any consequence is a nonprofit. Our fairs are often fundraisers for other nonprofits as well. Our mission is to do good, but if we have no midway, we have no fair. We're a big fair, but there are a lot of smaller fairs and rural communities and the fairs are important for introducing new generations to agriculture. We just did an economic impact study and I urge all fairs to do the same, because having the numbers of what the fair does for a community, it makes the case why we need good carnivals.” 

The most immediate and thorny obstacle is the conflation of nonimmigrant temporary workers with the illegal immigration issue and mass deportations instituted by the Trump administration. “None of this belongs in the anti-immigration debate. It's a false idea on the part of some people that these are American jobs. Unfortunately they are the most obstreperous, it can feel like we're swimming upstream.”

But he added, “I'm an eternal optimist. The lobbying went well. We meet with congressmen and senators and within days there was a congressman speaking out on C-Span about the P4 Visas. Fairs and fair managers are essential to get the word out.”

Legislative Intrigue

Chiecko may be as optimistic about the ultimate fate of P4 carnival workers, but is also realistic about the rocky waters of federal legislation, especially in one of the most politically polarized periods in American history. “Washington is in a state of turmoil,” he said. “ Small bills like ours will never get to the floor on their own. Both houses are working on much larger and complex issues. We need to attach it to a must pass bill, such as an appropriation bill that funds the government. We have a good shot this year as last year's appropriations bills never happened. They basically are just funding whatever they funded last year.”

The current amount of cosponsors for the CARE Act could not be verified. Chiecko said that “we had 79 co-sponsors last year and we are actively getting them to sign back on. It takes time, but we are getting there. Eleven of last session's co-sponsors are no longer in the House. They either lost the election, moved on to the Senate or retired. We need to expand the reach beyond last terms co-sponsors, but for now that is our focus.”

One reason for optimism is that the CARES Act so far has bipartisan support, which in this year's federal legislature is rarer than unicorn blood. When asked if both Democrats and Republicans will be showing support in 2025 Chiecko said, “We expect so but it's too early to tell. Last congress, we had 43 Republicans and 34 Democrats. That is good bipartisan support.”

If hypothetically the bill does get through the process and lands on the president's desk, will Trump sign or veto? With the new tax bill dominating much of the legislative news in April and May, it's difficult to discern how the president will decide. What is widely known is that one of the president's chief advisors – and one of his most visible spokespersons – Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, has vehemently opposed all foreign guest workers programs. Chiecko concedes that Stephen Millers led the “opposition to the program in the first Trump administration, the executive offices have publicly stated that we need to look at legal ways for individuals to get into this country.”

Chieko admits that right now, he has “no read on the administration's perspective on P4 initiative at this point.”

But in their favor is the mounting support by high-profile fairs and the largest fair association in the world. It may be easier for a politician to overlook the woes of carnival companies and concessionaires, but fairs are annual traditions beloved by their communities and constituents. It's also a mandatory photo-op for most politicians seeking and/or holding office. Chiecko said this year's lobbying Fly-In with a beefed up representation by fairs may have pushed the political maneuvering to another level.

“We have found that if the fairs explain the problem, potentially losing their county fair without carnival revenue, we get faster results,” he said. “ Every person in Congress relates to their local fair in their upbringing. It hits much closer to home. When several fairs express concern in a district we achieve very good results. The IAFE's participation in the process has been amazing and we continue to grow the relationship.”

Learn more about how you can help lobby for the CARE and RIDE acts on the OABA's web site.