How Immigrants Can Solve America's Two Biggest Problems

Two of the US's most intractable problems could have the same solution - legal immigration - if the idea weren't so politically radioactive, reports CNN.

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As businesses across the country complain about their inability to find enough workers, the federal government is scrambling to stop the relentless stream of migrants on the southern border who want to find work in the US.

No one is suggesting a solution to the labor shortage by opening the border, but it remains a paradox that the country is going out of its way to keep out migrants looking for work, even as employers say the shortage of workers is preventing them from filling millions of jobs.

Labor shortages have also become a key factor behind persistent inflation and higher interest rates.

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“There is a disconnect between public policy and the economic reality on the ground,” said David Beer, associate director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “We have policies designed to keep people out, and at the same time we have a crisis in labor markets where we have almost 10 million open jobs.” This has been going on for two years now.”

Two questions - one answer

These problems have a common solution: the expansion of legal immigration routes. Many experts believe that taking in more immigrants is the most realistic way to boost America's stagnant workforce after years of historically slow growth in the working-age population. And creating more opportunities for legal entry into the United States—while maintaining strict penalties for illegal entry—may be the best long-term leverage to reduce border pressure by encouraging more migrants to use legal means to enter the country and find work.

Experts agree that, with or without the expansion of legal immigration, deteriorating economic and social conditions in many Latin American countries guarantee difficulties in controlling the flow of migrants attempting to cross the southern border. Joe Biden and his administration are betting that creating more legal options will reduce the number of people willing to cross the border illegally and reduce border pressure, which in turn will meet the needs of the economy.

"It's the theory of the case," said Angela Kelly, chief policy adviser to the American Immigration Lawyers Association and former senior adviser to Alejandro Mallorcas' Department of Homeland Security.

Carrot and stick

Biden's calculation is that more opportunities for legal entry creates more leverage for tougher enforcement.

The White House believes that if potential migrants decide they have no realistic chance of entering and working in America legally, they will be less likely to fear years of entry bans if they are caught trying to enter illegally. After all, migrants may not view such a denial of legal entry as a big risk if there was virtually no chance of legal entry anyway. To create an effective stick—a travel ban for five years or more on illegal border crossers—there needs to be an equally effective carrot—easy access to a legal path to immigration, the administration and immigration advocates say. One without the other will not work effectively.

The Biden administration did not emphasize too much that legal immigration could alleviate the labor market crisis. But she put forward the additional argument that more legal immigration could create a carrot-and-stick dynamic that discourages illegal migration. As Mallorcas said at a recent press conference, "Our overall approach is to create legal routes for people coming to the United States and to take tougher action against those who choose not to use those routes."

By using executive power, Biden has done more to blaze these legal pathways than is commonly believed. Biden doubled the number of migrants admitted on permanent work visas, using his legal authority to reallocate unused family visas to workers. It has greatly expanded the number of temporary guest workers admitted to both farming and seasonal work in businesses such as fishing and hotels, and targeted some of those additional visas to countries in Latin America, including Guatemala and El Salvador, where difficult domestic conditions are adding to the pressure. for illegal migration.

Biden has also substantially increased the number of people receiving "temporary protected status," which allows them to stay and work (or study) in the US due to insecure conditions in their home country.

Most ambitiously, Biden used the federal government's so-called parole powers to legally take in large numbers of migrants from countries facing acute crisis. Presidents of both parties have previously used parole, such as for Vietnamese immigrants after the fall of South Vietnam or Cubans after the communist takeover of the island. After first applying parole powers to people from Afghanistan and Ukraine, the Biden administration subsequently announced that it would receive up to 30 migrants per month from four countries: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba.

The administration and its allies note that the number of illegal border crossings by migrants from the four countries subject to parole has dropped sharply since the program went into effect. “The evidence is promising,” Kelly says. “The parole capability undermines the smuggling operation, encouraging more people to seek the legal route instead.”

However, the right to parole as an instrument is limited because it only allows you to stay in the US for two years. And a coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general is suing to overturn its use.

The Biden administration, according to the GOP in their lawsuit, "under the false pretense of preventing foreigners from illegally crossing the border between ports of entry, actually created a new visa program - without the legislative formalities of Congress." The lawsuit follows a well-trodden path that Republicans have used to block other Biden administration initiatives, and the case is now before a Trump-appointed district judge in Texas.

A stronger system of legal immigration on its own "will not solve the current crisis," said Doris Meisner, former Commissioner of the US Naturalization and Immigration Services under President Bill Clinton. But such a system, in her opinion, can help stabilize the situation on the border.

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During Trump's presidency, Republicans in the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to implement the biggest reduction in legal immigration since the 1920s, even though the US has experienced a long period of slow population growth, especially its working-age population.

Many of them argue that instead of accepting more immigrants, the United States should encourage more Native adults to enter the labor market.

“What we shouldn't do is allow even more immigration, which allows us to ignore crime, social unrest, drug abuse and other social problems associated with so many working-age people not working,” said Stephen Camarota, director According to research from the Center for Immigration Studies, Several Republican-controlled states have responded to labor shortages in their own way—by eliminating restrictions on child labor, including in hazardous conditions.

Demographic Issues

The backdrop to this immigration debate is that the US is experiencing one of its longest periods of sluggish population growth. In fact, from 2010 to 2020, the population grew more slowly than in any ten-year period in U.S. history except during the Great Depression, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank.

The slowdown has been particularly hard on young people and the working-age population. The US labor force (primarily the available workforce aged 16 and over) grew by nearly three-fifths from 1960 to 1980 and grew again by more than a third from 1980 to 2000. But from 2000 to 2020, it increased by only about one-sixth. Since 2020, the labor force has grown even more slowly.

As Frey points out, the number of children under the age of 18 in the US has declined by about 1 million from 2010 to 2020. Because today's children are tomorrow's workers, this recession ensures a steady decline in the workforce.

Not only the number of workers in the prime of life stagnated, but also their share actively participating in the labor market. As the unbiased Employee Benefits Research pointed out in a recent study, the proportion of working-age adults employed or looking for work has stuck at just over three-fifths in recent years, compared to about two-thirds at the end of last year.

Even these sluggish recent labor force growth trends have been underpinned by a historic and likely unsustainable anomaly: a significant increase in the number of older Americans who continue to work. The share of the workforce made up of workers over 55 has doubled from about one in eight in 1993 to almost one in four today. This means that the economy is much more dependent on older workers than at any time in its recent history.

Craig Copeland, director of welfare research at EBRI and author of the report, says that while many older workers want to stay at work, either for financial or personal reasons, the country probably cannot support such active worker participation. older than the traditional retirement age of about 65.

Copeland notes that there is no generally accepted explanation for the decline in the number of working or job-seeking adults in their prime. Theories include everything from the opioid epidemic in many worker communities to the liberal argument that wages are too low to the conservative claim that excessive social benefits are keeping people out of work.

However, whatever the cause, the consequence is clear: a shortage of jobs as one of the causes of persistent inflation.

Answer at the border

Copeland believes there is only one likely way to create more workers in the near future: to take in more immigrants. As Beer of the Cato Institute points out, the US is already relying on immigrants to replenish its available workforce: a study he conducted found that since 1995, immigrants and their children have accounted for 70% of the increase in workers in their prime.

Which brings the discussion back to the boundary. Although the flood of migrants expected by critics after Section 42 was terminated has not materialized, communities near and beyond the border are still struggling to cope with the constant flow of those who arrive and seek asylum.

Yet many remain irritated by the fact that the country is simultaneously struggling to keep crowds of people who want to work at the border, even as businesses insist they can't fill millions of jobs.

“If we need low-wage workers, and there are a lot of people at the border who want to work, then maybe there is some way to solve this problem,” says Copeland.

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Biden's efforts to reduce border pressure by allowing more legal immigration relied on executive power, not legislation. Not only does this leave him vulnerable to legal challenges, such as a lawsuit from GOP-led states, but it ultimately limits his options.

Only action by Congress can expand legal immigration routes on a scale that could truly respond to the nation's labor shortage.

Whatever happened to Biden's efforts to promote more legal immigration, Meisner believes they are just one component of a strategy to keep order at the border. Also important, she said, is something else the administration is aiming for: more funding to process asylum cases faster, in particular to ensure faster removal from the US of those whose claims have been rejected.

Even the best immigration regulation, Meisner warns, is likely to fail because of the pressure exerted by millions of people fleeing growing dysfunction in many countries of this hemisphere.

The Biden administration estimates that more than 7 million people have left Venezuela in the past few years, the vast majority of whom have resettled in other Latin American countries. The partnerships the Biden administration is trying to forge with countries like Canada and Mexico are critical to any possibility of restoring more control over migration in the region, Meisner said.

“It can't just be the United States,” Meisner says. She argues that the only effective solutions "really right now are the hemispheres."

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