ORONO – Had the fictional character of Hamlet been a Maine logging company executive rather than a Danish prince, his famous question may have been phrased a little differently: H2B or not H2B?

Though it has had an effect on Maine’s logging industry, the increasing scarcity in Maine of seasonal foreign workers available through the federal H2B visa program has not resulted in a situation as dire as that faced by Shakespeare’s tragic figure.

Logging company executives attending a pulp-and-paper industry symposium held at University of Maine in Orono said Thursday that market forces helped lessen the blow last year of having virtually no foreign workers to help harvest timber in Maine’s vast forests.

Still, easing the federal rules that restrict how these workers are allowed into the country would help bolster the long-term economic viability of the state’s logging industry and the local communities that depend on it, according to one industry official.

“Our industry is at a competitive disadvantage,” Patrick Hackley, communications director of Maine Forest Products Council, said Friday. “At this point, we’re looking at a repeat of last summer, unfortunately.”

The workers are needed in Maine because the local year-round populations are not large enough to support the number of seasonal jobs that become available each summer in the logging and tourism industries. Maine is at a disadvantage in applying for the worker visas, Hackley said, because of federal laws that restrict when Maine companies can apply.

Each year, only 66,000 H2B workers are allowed into the country. Federal regulators start issuing these visas on Oct. 1, at the start of each federal fiscal year. When they reach that limit, they stop until Oct. 1 rolls around again, and then they start over.

Federal law restricts companies that need these workers from applying for their visas more than 120 days in advance of when they are needed, according to Hackley. In Maine, this means that logging companies and hospitality businesses that need workers on June 1 cannot apply for the visas before Feb.1. Similar companies in warmer climates, where the busy season occurs during the winter months, can apply for the worker visas closer to the Oct. 1 start date.

H2B workers have become scarce in Maine in recent years because the number of such workers employed nationwide has risen and because heightened immigration concerns have prompted federal officials to start keeping track of the number of such visas issued. This year, the annual national limit of 66,000 was reached in early January. After numbering in the thousands in the early part of the decade, H2B workers who come to Maine this year could be as few as a couple hundred, some officials have said.

Jeff Desjardins, general manager for the Jackman sawmill company Moose River Lumber, said Friday that the H2B workers who have harvested logs in Maine’s woods tend to be Canadians who live not far over the border. The lack of Canadian loggers available to work in Maine last year limited his company’s supply, he said.

According to Hackley, federal legislators also are considering whether foreign employees who return to the same jobs year after year could be made exempt from the cap.

“It’s a short-term fix, but it’s an effort to avoid a repeat of last year’s lockout of H2B workers,” Hackley said. “We’re looking at another drought.”