Organizers of area events are struggling to find carnivals, as companies report they’re struggling to recoup from the pandemic and are facing labor shortages attributed to visa restrictions.
Farm-City Days, one of the largest festivals in Allen County scheduled for Oct. 14-17, will not have a carnival this year. Organizers were unsuccessful in attempts to find a company that could come to Iola.
The Kincaid Fair, one of the longest-running festivals in the area (110 years), also will be without a carnival when it returns Sept. 23-25.
“Unfortunately, there is a shortage of carnival companies in the Midwest. This makes it nearly impossible for small fairs such as the Kincaid Fair to afford contracting a carnival,” organizers wrote when announcing the news on Wednesday.
An increase in positive COVID-19 cases also makes it difficult to secure a carnival, requiring extra precautions to protect the public from the spread of disease.
At the Anderson County Fair in late July, organizers were notified the night before that the carnival they expected would not arrive. They scrambled to add activities and refund advance ticket sales.
The cancellation was attributed to a labor shortage, organizers said.
Carnival companies across the nation are bemoaning the lack of available workers, and in particular a lack of seasonal foreign workers because of visa restrictions, according to several media stories.
The New York Times, in an article posted Aug. 2, outlined the problem.
The H-2B visa allows for temporary workers for non-agricultural purposes. That includes carnivals and amusement parks, landscaping, forestry, housekeeping, restaurants and construction.
The H-2B visa program is capped at 66,000, split between winter and summer seasons. In May 2021, the Biden administration agreed to allow another 22,000, temporarily. The visas are granted in a lottery system.
Demand for the visas is at an all-time high, at about 90,000 requests.
But workers and companies continue to see delays at foreign consulates, travel restrictions and backlogs, the Times reported.
Temporary guest worker programs are controversial, as some argue they rob American citizens from potential jobs and international workers can sometimes be mistreated, exploited or cheated out of pay by unscrupulous employers.
Others, though, argue American workers don’t want seasonal jobs that tend to offer lower pay for physically demanding work, according to the Times.
