Why The U.S. Won’t Put Immigrants To Work
Summary
TLDRThe US economy faces a significant shortfall of workers, with 9-12 million job openings unfilled, costing the country over $1 trillion in lost production annually. Despite this, restrictive immigration policies limit the influx of much-needed skilled and unskilled labor. The aging population and declining birth rate exacerbate the labor shortage, while the current immigration system, focused on family reunification and not tailored to economic needs, fails to address the issue. Experts suggest a more inclusive policy that prioritizes labor market demands could alleviate the strain and contribute to economic growth.
Takeaways
- 📉 The US economy is losing around $1 trillion annually due to unfilled job openings, which range between 9 to 12 million.
- 🌐 Despite high demand for labor, US immigration policies restrict the hiring of unskilled migrants, aiming to protect domestic workers.
- 🌆 The US remains a top destination for global migrants seeking better opportunities, with Ipsos surveys highlighting its enduring appeal.
- 🚫 There is a public divide, with 51% of Americans surveyed by the Cato Institute expressing concerns that immigration could reduce job availability.
- 📈 The US is experiencing a historic immigration crisis with 2.7 million border encounters in fiscal year 2022, highlighting the need for policy reform.
- 👵 An aging US population and declining birth rates are contributing to labor shortages and potential economic stagnation.
- 🌱 The US could benefit economically by allowing more young, skilled immigrants to enter legally, filling labor and skill gaps.
- 🏢 Major tech companies like Google and Apple rely on visa systems to hire foreign workers for specialized roles, indicating a demand for high-skilled labor.
- 🏛 The US green card system is restrictive, with lengthy processes and limited opportunities for employer-sponsored immigration, especially for less skilled positions.
- 🌐 Canada's immigration policy, which is more open and focused on economic growth, serves as a model for how the US could potentially reform its system.
- 🌱 The US needs to consider a more inclusive immigration policy to address labor shortages, support economic growth, and adapt to global challenges like climate change.
Q & A
What is the current range of job openings in the US?
-The number of job openings in the US has been between 9 million to 12 million.
How does the unfilled job openings impact the US economy?
-Unfilled job openings are estimated to be causing a loss of about $1 trillion in production every year.
What is the perception of the US as a destination for emigration?
-The US is still considered the 'shining city on the hill' and the most popular place for people to emigrate to, according to Ipsos surveys.
What is the stance of American immigration policies on hiring unskilled migrants?
-American immigration policies bar many employers from hiring unskilled migrants, claiming it protects American workers.
How does the US population's aging affect the workforce?
-Aging out of the workforce leads to a decline in innovation and economic growth, with the ratio of older individuals to working-age individuals increasing significantly over the past decade.
What is the role of immigration in addressing the US labor shortage?
-Immigration can help address the labor shortage and economic needs of the US by bringing in young people who are willing to work and contribute.
What types of visas are available for skilled workers in the US?
-The US offers visas for entrepreneurs, professionals, and those with extraordinary abilities, such as H-1B, L-1, O-1, and EB-1A visas.
How does the current immigration system affect the US economy?
-The current immigration system is restrictive and does not effectively address the economic needs of the US, leading to a missed opportunity for economic growth.
What is the role of foreign-born workers in the US workforce?
-Foreign-born workers accounted for 18.1% of the US workforce in 2022, and they are significant contributors to job creation, particularly as entrepreneurs.
What are some proposed solutions to the US immigration crisis?
-Proposed solutions include securing the border, reforming the legal immigration system, and prioritizing labor and economic needs over family reunification.
How does the US immigration policy compare to Canada's?
-Canada's immigration policy is more open and economically driven, allowing for a legal pathway for talented individuals to contribute to the economy, unlike the US's more restrictive approach.
Outlines
📉 US Labor Shortage and Immigration Policies
The US is experiencing a significant labor shortage with between 9 to 12 million job openings, leading to an estimated $1 trillion loss in annual production. Despite this, there's a desire among millions to immigrate to the US for work, viewing it as a land of opportunity. However, current immigration policies restrict the hiring of unskilled migrants to protect domestic workers. There's a public divide, with 51% of Americans surveyed by the Cato Institute expressing concerns that immigration could reduce job availability. The immigration crisis is exacerbated by a record number of border encounters and a legal immigration system facing unprecedented backlogs. The aging US population and declining birth rate further strain the workforce, with a shrinking workforce leading to decreased innovation and economic growth. There's a suggestion that a more focused immigration policy could help address these issues by filling skill gaps and contributing to the economy.
🛂 The Impact of Immigration on the US Workforce
The US immigration system includes various visa types aimed at attracting skilled workers to fill specific roles and stimulate economic growth. Entrepreneurs and professionals with unique expertise can obtain visas, with tech giants like Google and Apple utilizing these systems. However, the H-1B visa program, intended for high-skilled labor, is criticized for suppressing wage growth by undercutting prevailing wages, thus preventing the market from attracting American workers to those fields. The green card system is restrictive, with most immigrants entering through family ties rather than employment sponsorship. Legal pathways for immigrants are limited, with family-based immigration, student visas, and the diversity visa lottery being the main avenues. Despite some instances of discrimination, foreign-born workers often create more jobs for Americans and are overrepresented among entrepreneurs. The US immigration policy is seen as too restrictive for the current economic needs, with outdated laws and a system that doesn't align with the labor market's demands.
🌐 Global Perspectives on US Immigration Policy
The US spends considerable resources on housing and caring for migrants, yet its immigration policies are not effectively harnessing this potential workforce. With climate change预计 to displace over 1 billion people by 2050, the US could benefit economically from a more open immigration policy, as seen in Canada's approach. Canada's system is more accessible for talented individuals, focusing on economic growth and self-interest. There's a call for the US to recognize the economic benefits of immigration and to simplify the process for those wishing to work and contribute. Suggestions include securing the border, reforming the legal immigration system to prioritize labor and economic needs, and adopting more inclusive policies. The Occupational Opportunity Network aims to provide data to decision-makers on how migrants can help the US economy grow, advocating for a comprehensive immigration reform that considers the actual labor market needs and the potential of migrants to fill skill gaps and contribute to the economy.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Job Openings
💡Economy
💡Immigration Policies
💡Skill Gaps
💡Aging Population
💡Birth Rate
💡Work Visas
💡E-Verify
💡Green Card
💡Entrepreneurs
💡Immigration Reform
Highlights
The US has 9 to 12 million job openings, leading to an annual loss of about $1 trillion in unfilled positions.
Despite high demand for jobs, US immigration policies restrict hiring of unskilled migrants.
The US remains the top choice for global emigration, according to Ipsos surveys.
The US birth rate is declining, exacerbating the labor shortage.
Legal immigration could help mitigate the effects of population aging and fertility decline.
In 2022, nearly 1 million temporary foreign work visas were granted in the US.
The US has not updated its immigration laws in over three decades, affecting its economic needs.
Immigrants contribute significantly to the US economy, with 25% being entrepreneurs.
The US spends considerable resources on housing and caring for migrants.
Climate change may displace over 1 billion people by 2050, presenting a potential opportunity for the US economy.
Canada's immigration policy is economically driven and has helped its economy grow.
The US should consider more inclusive immigration policies to meet its labor and economic needs.
The Occupational Opportunity Network aims to provide data to inform comprehensive immigration reform.
Immigrants are seen as a potential blessing for the US, bringing work and skills to contribute to the economy.
Transcripts
The number of job openings in the US has been hovering
between 9 million to 12 million open roles, and
these empty desks are dragging down the economy.
You're talking about passing up something like $1
trillion in production every year that these jobs
go unfilled.
At the same time, there are millions of people who want
to come to the US to work.
It still is the shining city on the hill for most people
in the world if they're going to emigrate.
And we do surveys at Ipsos where I see this, the most
popular place for people to emigrate in the world is
still the United States.
It's clear that the US has a very important pull factor
in terms of migration. It's the largest economy in the
world.
But American immigration policies bar many employers
from hiring unskilled migrants, claiming it
protects American workers.
Joe Biden's 5 million illegal aliens are on the
verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs.
The public is split evenly on this.
51% of Americans surveyed by the Cato Institute worry
immigration could reduce the number of jobs
available. Meanwhile, a crisis at the border
continues.
Illegal immigrants. In fiscal 22, there were 2.7
million encounters at the border.
It's a sort of bum rush where the people who get to
make the choice about who fills this supposed labor
vacuum are the people who show up at the border, as
opposed to the United States Congress and the
people who voted for it.
The immigration crisis is of historic proportions right
now, both in terms of the number of people violating
the law and the fact that our legal immigration system
is facing backlogs like it's never seen before in
the history of the United States.
How US Immigration policies Hurt the economy.
The US is running out of workers.
It's been this way for a while, and with only 5.8
million unemployed workers and almost 10 million open
roles, the math just will not add up.
Meanwhile, a large majority of the US population is
aging out of the workforce.
The effect of a shrinking aging population is a
decline in innovation, combined with the fact that
you're just going to run out of the things that drove
economic growth.
You just look at the facts of the US population.
In the 1970s, there were about 15 people of older age
or after retirement for each working age individual
in the US. Nowadays that number is 25 plus.
It has been rising significantly over the past
ten years.
The US birth rate is also declining, so there will be
fewer young Americans to fill the open roles.
If we were in a world where we actually wanted to
reallocate resources in the most effective way globally,
you know, it's a no brainer to say, well, the US now
needs a lot of young people and we have them.
They want to come.
And it's just really a matter of understanding that
it's beneficial for the country.
But if we decide to import a larger number of young
people to to do labor to become new Americans, we
have to do it in a manner that's that's legal and
that's fair. If we could recruit people who spoke
English and had skills and were of working age and
healthy, that would be better if we're making a
pure economic argument, then allowing in the
elderly, infirm parents of existing American citizens
or just whoever shows up at the border.
It's a huge opportunity for the United States to blunt
some of the effect of fertility decline and
population aging by having an immigration policy that
may be a bit more focused, not necessarily on just
accepting anybody for compassionate reasons, but
for bringing in people to to fill in those skill gaps.
There are people who want to come to the US to work.
Almost 1 million temporary foreign work visas were
granted in 2022.
The reason why the United States is seeing more
migration in the last couple of years under this
administration in particular is because we
have more job openings now than we've had at any point
in our entire history.
This enormous increase in the amount of demand for
workers is driving people to move and seek opportunity
here.
I don't think I agree with that estimate of there
being, whatever, 9 to 12 million unfilled jobs unless
we balance it with the number of people who are
sitting on the bench, in other words, who aren't
looking for work anymore.
I don't think there's ever been a time when there
weren't jobs here if you were willing to undercut
local wages.
But as people come to the US, finding legal work is
difficult. Now immigration policy conversations tend to
center around the ability to work.
In 1986, Congress banned people working without
authorization in the United States.
This bill, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1986 that I'll sign in a few minutes is the most
comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952.
They made it impossible to hire someone who was in the
United States illegally or without employment
authorization.
It traded amnesty for about 3 million people who were
here illegally for enforcement in the future.
Now they have a system called E-Verify.
Any employer, if they're going to hire somebody,
just. Puts in their name and data into a into a
database. It pings off all the, the federal holdings
just to make sure that that person is authorized to
work. And if the answer is no, then that person can't
get a job. That was the deal.
It never happened.
The amnesty happened, but the work authorization part
never went through.
It set up this magnet of people being able to come in
and work illegally and get paid under the table.
And so it never achieved the purpose that it was
supposed to achieve.
Immigrants are granted work authorization papers, which
are intended to correlate with the employees needed to
fill open roles and help the economy grow.
There are visas for entrepreneurs.
There are visas for people who want to work in
professional positions.
When those employers can show that there isn't
somebody in the United States with that same
expertise, for example.
So this is not about taking American jobs or something
like that, right?
Major US tech companies like Google, Apple and Meta use
this visa system to fill roles.
These jobs require proof of extraordinary ability, in
the case of 0-1 and EB-1A visas.
Visas like the HB-1 require at least a bachelor's degree
or equivalent, and L-1 visas require the employee
to have preexisting relationships with the
company that works in the US and abroad.
Take one example. I know we have this H-1B visa, right?
The whole idea of that was that it's filling a
temporary demand for high skilled labor with trained
foreigners that Americans can't do well.
What's supposed to happen if you believe in markets as
I do, and if a market is working properly, an
internal market, then you're going to attract
people to study those things in college and to
take those jobs. But the H-1B, because it always
somewhat undercuts the prevailing wage, it's never
allowed the market to exercise that function where
the wages go up and then people are tempted to go
into those fields and fill those jobs.
The green card system is extremely restrictive in the
United States.
The vast majority of people come through family ties,
and there are very few opportunities for people who
are sponsored by employers.
The regulatory barriers to sponsoring a foreign worker
are monumental.
You're talking about a process that typically can
take between 2 and 3 years for a worker to get through.
It is effectively off the table to sponsor a worker
for a lesser skilled position.
Maybe you're looking to hire someone who's going to
be just an electrician, doesn't require a college
degree, but you need some technical skills.
That is not something that our immigration system is
designed for.
Aside from a work visa, the main legal ways immigrants
can come to the US are via family based immigration
student visas through the diversity visa lottery.
Like Professor Bahar, By seeking asylum or by
claiming refugee status.
It's very important to note that these pathways have
been really narrowed and shut down over over the
years.
In 2022, foreign born workers accounted for 18.1%
of the US workforce, up from 17.4% in 2021.
While there have been some cases of companies
deliberately discriminating against US workers in favor
of foreign born employees, the majority of foreign born
workers actually create more jobs for Americans.
Immigrants represent 25% of entrepreneurs in the
country. They create firms at a higher rate.
They create firms that grow much faster in terms of
jobs. And if you look, for instance, at Fortune 500
companies, more than 40% of these companies have been
created by immigrants or children of immigrants.
The reality is that immigrants who come in do
create jobs for Americans, better paying jobs with
better benefits.
In the meantime, many desks continue to sit idle.
U.s immigration policy is far too restrictive for the
economic needs of the United States.
We haven't had an update in our illegal immigration laws
in more than three decades.
We're stuck with the same quotas that we had before
the invention of the Internet.
I mean, this is the most important aspect of our
immigration laws, the fact that far more people would
like to live in the United States legally than are able
to do so on an annual basis.
The US spends a lot of money, housing and caring
for migrants.
We've seen a lot of efforts from the authorities to keep
migrants from coming at a time where, you know, this
country needs a lot of workers and also when they
come to try to keep them from working and to try to
keep them perhaps in places without work permits in a
way that they're actually their stays being subsidized
by the American taxpayer, instead of actually telling
them, hey, go and work, find your talent, reach your
full potential.
If you're coming for economic opportunity, if you
want to work and contribute to the United States, you're
going to be an asset.
And with the increasing perils of climate change,
more people are going to be forced to move.
Unfortunately, the United States doesn't recognize any
any pathway to live in the United States based on
climate change or global warming.
More than 1 billion people may be displaced due to
climate change by 2050.
This could present an opportunity for the US
economy, much like Canadian immigration policies have
helped its economy grow.
Canada is a country that has a system which is very
different. It's a system where people with talent can
easily find or relatively easily find a legal pathway
to reach their full potential there.
Well, I'm a Canadian, and I should say for your your
audience. Our immigration policy here in this country
is has elements of compassion to it, but it's
really very self-interested and economically driven with
an aging population and a declining birth rate, the
only way that you're going to be able to continue to
grow your economy is you've got if you've got people to
be consumers, people to be workers and people to be tax
payers.
One could argue that Canada has benefited a lot from the
broken migration system in the US.
I don't believe that in Washington DC there is a
consensus about what the purpose of our immigration
system should be.
And so as soon as we realize migration is never going to
stop, then I think we can start to make some
intelligent choices about what we do with it.
Then the first thing I would do is I would secure the
border. I would complete a physical barrier that made
it impossible for people to just swim or walk into the
country without having to meet some border official
and present their their case and their demands.
I would reform the legal system to make it easier for
people to apply.
Would not necessarily mean that they would get the
benefit. And I would make sure that the needs of labor
and the economy were placed above family reunification,
not eliminate the latter category, but change the
emphasis.
Other groups suggest adopting more inclusive
policies overall.
I argue that the onus should be on the US government to
show why people should not be able to cross rather than
on people to show why they should be able to.
There are many reasons that there are many valid reasons
why someone might want to come and live in the United
States. And it should be a simple process, right, to
say I would like to work.
Danny Bahar and his colleagues are developing
what they're calling the Occupational Opportunity
Network to help keep decision makers informed
about how migrants can help the US economy grow.
And what we're trying to do is to really provide to the
decision makers the numbers that need to be on the table
when we're thinking about doing a comprehensive reform
of the immigration system.
By looking at every occupation in every locality
in the US and projections and historical data, we're
able to actually come up with numbers that are much
higher than the current caps in the in the US
system. And we hope that these numbers are going to
be the basis for a comprehensive immigration
reform.
It all starts with people because that's all an
economy is.
The reality is we need more workers to make up for the
declining birth rates in this country.
We need not only in the short term to fill these
labor shortages, but also in the long term to make
sure that we have the workers that we need.
So I think the message of trying to see these people
as a terrible burden instead of a blessing
because they could bring work and skills that they
could act, they're willing to work and they're willing
to contribute if they are just given the opportunity
instead of being bounded to a locality or to, you know,
to a place without subsidized by the taxpayers,
that's something that it goes beyond me.
I think it's un-American.
And I think this country can do much better than
that.
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