BRETT BROWNLEE’S ENTREPRENEURIAL streak started simply: as a kid, for kid reasons, with his brother. “Growing up, he and I just used to push mowers around our parents’ subdivision to try to save up money to buy basketball shoes,” he says. The venture looks a bit different these days. Brownlee makes a living running Archway Lawn Care in the St. Louis area. The company brings in millions of dollars in revenue each year and employs around 50 people during peak season.
That isn’t to say things have always been easy. Archway’s staffing has been a bit of a revolving door, with many employees working there for a year or less. “At times like now where it seems everyone’s hiring,” says Brownlee, “we don’t get very many, if any, applicants at all.”
To bridge the labor gap, Archway relies on temporary seasonal workers from abroad. In 2023, it employed 29 of them. But that visa program is so dysfunctional, Brownlee says, that it puts him on a “rollercoaster of emotions every year.” Small business owners who use the program have to deal with workers arriving too late in the season, workers leaving too early, or even receiving no workers at all.
There’s “no certainty whatsoever” for employers, he continues. “We rack our brain every day on why we keep doing it because it’s frustrating, to say the least.”
Archway is one of many American small businesses that can’t find enough willing native-born workers and needs foreign laborers to get the job done. The federal government doesn’t make it easy
