Work Visa Expansion Aims to Ease Border Surge, Summer Labor Woes

For Dulce Solares, realizing her family’s dreams—a car, a house, and a safe environment—meant making the 2,000-mile trip from Guatemala City to northern Michigan.

This month, Solares started her second summer working as a restaurant host at the historic Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, earning a monthly paycheck at least five times larger than the $500 or so she typically earned at a call center back home.

The 29-year-old is among thousands of Central American workers granted visas this year for seasonal jobs that US businesses have struggled desperately to fill, from fisheries in western Alaska to landscapers in the ...