Amid worker shortage, Chicago hotels want to be able to hire migrants more easily
By LAUREN VICTORY
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — “Revenge travel” continues to surge. Americans are booking trips right and left thanks to a burning desire to leave their homes after the pandemic.
What’s not so hot is how it’s going behind the scenes at hotels. CBS 2’s Lauren Victory reported on a recruitment solution the industry is pushing for and how it could affect your taxes.
Summer is flying by and London House check-ins are soaring. The hotel is thriving out front, but hurting in the back.
“It’s a perfect storm of the highest business levels we’ve ever seen, but then labor shortages throughout the city,” said Juan Leyva, general manager of the London House.
Leyva filled CBS 2 in on vacancies at the hotel. The kitchen especially needs help, at least five to 10 more employees.
“Dishwashers, barbacks, stewards, cooks, entry-level cooks,” Leyva explained.
The crew does the best they can, but fewer workers inside might mean longer food and beverage wait times outside.
Leyva said other Chicago hotels are struggling to hire for housekeeping roles. If only some of the rooms get cleaned, not all the rooms can be available. That means lost hotel revenue and less hotel tax for the city.
CBS 2 spoke with Chip Rogers of the American Hotel and Lodging Association that wants to recruit from a very specific pool of people: asylum seekers.
Thousands have arrived by the busload in Chicago in the past year and have been sleeping in police stations and pop-up shelters. Many came with little money. A job could get them back on their feet and off the city’s dime.
Victory: “Why do you think an asylum seeker would want to work in the hotel industry?”
Rogers: “Well, we know they do because we’ve talked to them, and we’ve talked to hotels that are actually housing asylum seekers who say they want to work in the very hotel that they’re staying.”
The Department of Justice gives asylum seekers “permanent permission to live and work in the United States.” The problem is that federal law says they can’t start a gig right away.
There is a minimum six-month wait to join the workforce.
A nonprofit’s video explaining the timeline has been viewed on YouTube more than 17,000 times. The Hotel Association is lobbying to expedite the process for asylum seekers to obtain work permits.
“They must come through a legal port of entry,” Rogers said. “They must do it the right way, but if they’re willing to do that, and there are open jobs for them, we think they shouldn’t have to wait six months.”
They’re proposing a 30-day delay instead of that 180-day wait in the Asylum Seeker Worker Authorization Act of 2023.
“It would solve a part of a larger problem,” Rogers said. “It’s about 2 million asylum seekers. Clearly, they’re not all going to work for the hotel industry, but many would.”
Proponents argue the proposal would be a win for migrants in Chicago, and for local hotels which are reporting more than 2,100 job openings.
“We’ve had to compete with other industries,” Leyva said.
Leyva often shares his personal story of once being an undocumented hotel worker as part of his pitch.
“I went from being a parking garage attendant to a front desk associate, supervisor, manager, director, and now the general manager of London House.”
It’s a success story he hopes other migrant families can replicate someday.
Hotel worker wages are at an all-time high. Wages for entry-level positions, including one at London House, start around $24 an hour.
The bill to reduce the wait times for asylum seekers to receive a work permit hasn’t made many moves yet. Congress is on a summer schedule at the moment.
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