November 30, 2009
Most yacht crew know it’s difficult to figure out what to do when it comes to U.S. immigration issues. You do everything you think you should – even things you hear customs and immigration officers tell you to do, or things you read in your trusted newspaper – and then when you get to the point of entry into the U.S., everything goes wrong.
I have heard two disturbing tales from captains that fly in the face of several standard practices in the yachting industry. I could verify these with neither the crew members involved nor with the customs officers, but I trust the captains who told me these stories.
Scene 1: A captain is standing on the aft deck talking to two officer from Customs and Border Protection. A young man comes aboard and hands the captain a resume. The CBP officer says, “Can I see that?” and the captain hands it to him. (“What am I going to say, no?” he said.)
The CBP officer then turns to the young man and asks how he is here and the young man explains he has a B1/B2.
“Have a seat, we’ll be right with you.”
The CBP officer detained him, and the young man was eventually deported.
It is illegal to look for work if you have been admitted to the United States on the B1 portion of a B1/B2 visa. CBP officers don’t usually go looking for this sort of infraction – they have bigger fish to fry – but when it walks up to them and hands them a resume, they have to respond.
“They told me it was the lack of manpower that prevents them from going further with this,” the captain said.
The captain who told me this story worried about all the crew who include on their resumes, on their Web sites, and in online classified ad listings that they have a B1/B2 visa and are looking for work.
“Couldn’t they all get in trouble?” he asked.
The short answer is yes, but the reality is that CBP officers haven’t paid all that much attention to yacht crew.
That may be changing.
Scene 2: At Bahia Mar the week before the Ft. Lauderdale International Boat Show, a captain reported that CBP officers walked the docks, asking captains for their passports. This captain is American and his wife has a green card, so the officers continued down the dock.
When they went outside to wash down the yacht, they saw the officers leading two groups of what appeared to be yacht crew in handcuffs to a van.
“I asked one of the guys what happened and he said they were working illegally,” the captain said.
Just what that means is unclear. The crew may have overstayed a visa, or they may have been temporary or day workers on a B1/B2 visa.
In either case, it appears the industry standard of using the B1/B2 visa to come to Ft. Lauderdale and look for work is becoming harder to do, at least during the obvious times such as during the boat show.
And perhaps it’s time for captains to stop requiring crew to include their visa information on their resumes. I’m not suggesting that foreign yacht crew do anything clandestine to work on yachts, but if that small shift means some otherwise well-meaning young crew member isn’t banished from the U.S., perhaps its worth it.
The U.S. Superyacht Association has been working tirelessly making connections with high-ranking CBP officials to try to sort through all this. But it’s going to take time.
Officer Paul Minton, program manager in the office of field operations at headquarters for CBP, spoke at the captains briefing during FLIBS. He was surprised to learn that yacht crew have trouble entering the U.S. sometimes, and he vowed to immediately get started on solving the problem.
When I spoke with him three weeks later, his efforts were still under way. He’s hoping to be able to send guidelines early this month to all field agents at points of entry around the country. They would stipulate that people working on private yachts are to be admitted on a B1 visa.
We’ll continue to follow this story. Watch www.the-triton.com for updates.
In other, less stressful news, Capt. Martin Butler has recently taken over command of the charter yacht M/Y Party Girl, a 146-foot Christensen. Born in Australia, Butler holds an MCA Class 4 Master 3000-ton license.
Allison Thompson and Scott Fratcher have taken over a luxury Catana 582 chartering in the South Pacific. This year they started in New Zealand and have visited Tonga, Samoa, Suvarow, Nuie, Tahiti, and spent three months fishing the Tuamotus before returning to Vava'u, Tonga, where they are based.
“It's great to be sailing this awesome catamaran with speeds that make the long South Pacific passages fly by,” Fratcher wrote in an e-mail last month. “Thanks to The Triton's motivation, we have been laying geocaches in Tonga. Follow our progress at www.tongacharter.com."
Have you made an adjustment in your latitude recently? Let us know. Send news of your promotion, change of yachts or career, or personal accomplishments to Editor Lucy Chabot Reed at lucy@the-triton.com.
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