Gustav Mauler's wealthy clientele comes from all over
the world, and his food reflects their tastes -- with dishes ranging
from American steak to Italian pasta to Southeast Asian seafood.
But when he wanted to hire an experienced Asian chef for one of
his restaurants, Bowl Shrimp in Las Vegas, it took over a year to
obtain the necessary visa.
"When I have to serve million-dollar customers from Hong Kong,
I need to bring something special to the table," said Mauler,
who is a master chef, one of only 50 in the United States to hold
the culinary field's highest honor. "They have a very discriminating
taste. Waiting one year for the chef I need is simply bad for business."
Increases in both the United States' ethnic minority population
and the numbers of foreign people traveling here have fueled demand
for international cuisine in recent years. As a result, experts
in the restaurant industry say there is an extreme shortage of chefs
qualified to produce exotic fare.
In July, Nevada Sens. Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a
Republican, co-sponsored the Culinary Worker Relief Act to make
it easier for talented foreign chefs to enter the country.
Their impetus was the situation in Las Vegas, where cuisine was
once limited to gamblers' buffets at casinos but which has become
a center for haute cuisine. Shortages of culinary talent, however,
are occurring nationwide.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service does not track the number
of visas sought by or granted to foreign chefs. However, the New
York law firm of Barst & Mukamal -- one of the largest immigration
practices in the country -- receives an estimated 500 visa applications
on behalf of foreign chefs each year, said Deborah Notkin, an attorney
there and an officer of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
At the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, Calif., Executive Chef Bill
Carter has to satisfy a wide variety of gastronomic tastes.
He has spent days researching Indian cuisine for a visit by dignitaries
from India. He has served a reunion of 16 Playboy bunnies, each
of whom requested a different ethnic dish. And when mansion owner
Hugh Hefner hosted business partners from Johnny Walker, the distiller,
the luncheon theme was Cuban -- the clients' favorite type of food.
"For me every day is a challenge because we're doing different
cuisine from around the world," Carter said. "We cater
the food to the client."
Carter used to bring in culinary staff from overseas through the
H1B visa program, which was created primarily in response to shortages
in technical fields. Since passage of the Immigration Act of 1990,
however, H1B has required applicants to have a bachelor's degree.
And most chefs do not have college degrees -- instead, they are
certified in culinary schools.
"Chefs are not treated the same way that other highly skilled,
highly trained people are, but they should be," said Sen. Ensign.
"Anybody who knows anything about very, very fine food understands
that it takes years and years of training."
Overseas chefs desiring to work in the United States generally have
two options: They may enter the country under the O visa for celebrity
actors, professional athletes and famed researchers. Or they may
apply for permanent residency, which can take two to four years.
"For someone in that essential role to have to wait that long
is unreasonable," said Notkin, the New York immigration attorney.
Only 10 percent of the chefs seeking the firm's help qualify for
the O visa. "They have to be people who are prominent in their
fields -- the best of the best," Notkin said.
The Reid and Ensign bill would create a new visa program especially
for chefs. The legislation has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary
Committee, where it awaits a hearing.
The National Restaurant Association, which represents 831,000 businesses
with 11 million employees, endorses the measure.
"This bill fulfills a very specific need within the food service
industry for dining professionals with significant ethnic cuisine
experience," said Brendan Flanagan, legislative representative
for the association. "Efforts to fill those positions among
domestic talents have fallen short in the last couple of years."
Opposition has come from some culinary schools, which argue that
they produce chefs skilled enough to satisfy the demand for quality
international cuisine. Some also fear that immigrant chefs could
take jobs from Americans.
Chef Bill Sy, for one, would prefer to see the American Culinary
Federation encourage more Americans to become chefs.
Sy is president of the federation's Phoenix chapter and a professor
at culinary schools in that metropolitan area. His international
cuisine course covers French, Italian, South American and Asian
dishes, and he said he has observed a dramatic increase in the quality
of American chefs since arriving in the United States from Tawain
in 1967.
"When I first came in, many of the executive chefs were European,
but that's not the case anymore," Sy said. "I think we
can't depend on the chefs imported from overseas. We should let
our own chefs do the job for the industry."
Ensign, however, sees no potential for harm in his legislation.
"We have some world-class (American) chefs here, don't get
me wrong," he said. Bringing in more world-class foreign chefs,
he said, will "teach even more Americans to become world-class."
(Jose Alfredo Flores can be contacted at news(at)newhouse.com)
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