Nate Nickerson serves up some of the best fried clams you’ll find anywhere. His Eastham clam shack, Arnold’s, has won countless awards and earned a loyal following across New England.

When Nate says that his entire industry faces a severe and potentially devastating worker shortage this summer, we listen.

The problem has to do with scarce short-term visas called H2Bs that allow businesses like Arnold’s to recruit seasonal workers to help during the peak season. Since 2005, Congress exempted returning workers from the nationwide annual cap of 66,000 workers. This year that exemption has expired—and unless Congress takes action, the result will be seasonal businesses open fewer hours on fewer days and serving fewer customers. Some will even close. Cape Cod alone needs anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 H2B visas a year to keep their businesses afloat.

In many cases, these workers have been coming back to the Cape to do the same jobs for years -- for the people who live there, these workers are trusted and familiar faces. Nickerson talks wistfully about Michael Doeman from Montego Bay, Jamaica, one of the best employees he’s ever had. “He does everything—fixes plumbing, bakes, landscapes, and basically makes Arnold’s into the pristine place the customers know and love.” He’s been coming for 6 years, but this year he couldn’t get a visa. “My job,” says Nickerson, “is infinitely more difficult without him.” This same story is playing out in small seasonal businesses across the Eastern Seaboard.

Meanwhile, further away, an even sadder story is unfolding: Many H2B workers spend their summers working grueling hours at several jobs to earn enough money to feed several families back home. “Each year,” Nickerson says, “Michael ships down barrels of shoes, sneakers, rice and beans to about 20 people in Jamaica.”

In a year when record food prices have left tens of millions worldwide hungry, Nickerson is planning to ship barrels of rice and beans to Jamaica so that Michael’s family doesn’t starve—but he’d rather have Michael working at his restaurant.

Make no mistake -- we need a long term, comprehensive, tough, fair and humane solution to our nation’s broken immigration system. But in a year when Republicans have blocked that long term solution, we have a responsibility to small businesses like Arnold’s to address the looming labor shortage they will face in just a few weeks. Congress needs to act – fast.

H2B workers are keeping afloat businesses that stimulate our economy and hire Americans. Cape Cod does $2 billion in business each summer— and the health of the entire tourism industry depends on finding enough workers to staff the clam shacks, beach shops, hotels and other businesses that bring in so much revenue.

Seasonal businesses need extra workers for a variety of reasons. Many Cape and Island restaurants open in the spring and shutter in the fall. Most Cape Codders, like most Americans, want year-round jobs with benefits. Most college kids can’t work into the fall season, and record gas prices scare off commuters. We’ve been holding job fairs to try to pair businesses with available workers—but it’s simply not possible to fill all these jobs locally.

Squeezing out H2B workers who are in the country legally will only encourage their employers to turn to the underground economy—which will lead to more exploitation, more lawbreaking, and less tax revenue.

This is a program that empowers legal workers eager to work hard, pay taxes into government programs whose benefits they’ll never see, and have no plans to stay in the US past their visa’s expiration date.

Every year, the H2B visa cap is filled in a single day. But we are not asking to raise the cap on H2B workers to be allowed into the country—simply that we not go backwards and start counting returning workers against the cap.

The H2B visa program isn’t perfect. As part of comprehensive immigration reform we need to ensure fair wage rates, legal protections for workers, an enforcement mechanism to crack down on employers who break the rules and new rules to make sure employers are doing their best to fill these jobs with American workers first. We need to help businesses find the workforce they need while also protecting American workers and their immigrant counterparts.

But make no mistake: time is running out to give businesses the employees they need this summer. Many have already given up hope and scaled back their hours. We need to make this common sense fix and we need to do it now.

We need to overhaul our immigration system. But until we do, we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good – and we can’t leave businesses like Arnold’s twisting in the wind.