Democratic Senate leaders agreed to end the filibuster that prevented the Senate from voting on a continuing resolution to extend the 2017 budget. The compromise ends the chamber’s stalemate and, extends the current budget to February 8th. In exchange for ending the filibuster Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) promised to bring immigration and DACA bills to the floor for debate.
Ending the shutdown is an important development for landscape professionals. A prolonged shutdown would have directly impacted many NALP members who depend on H-2B workers. The shutdown affected all non-essential personnel and included many federal staff from the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security which likely would have severely impacted the ability to process H-2B worker applications in a timely fashion.
In addition to averting the potential for H-2B processing delays, the compromise is important to many professional landscape companies because it allows additional time to lobby for 2018 H-2B cap-relief as well as to seek as resolution to DACA, which is currently set to expire in March. For additional information, contact Paul Mendelsohn.
