Right under the noses of pro-business Republicans and Democrats is an anti-business immigration system that impedes innovation and puts family farmers out of business.
Let me be clear: Far too many of our fellow Americans are out of work. Our economy cannot grow fast enough to ease the pain and suffering of our neighbors.
Job creation depends on our ability to recruit, train and retain the highest-skilled and hardest-working people from around the world. Two fixes to our immigration system -- one legislative, one administrative -- can expedite the creation of jobs in America.
While our education and training system is working overtime to fill a demand for hard-to-find workers in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, a recent report by The Partnership for a New American Economy and The Partnership for New York City found jobs in STEM fields are growing three times faster than jobs in rest of the economy.
But, while American businesses will need an estimated 800,000 workers with advanced science and engineering degrees in 2018, they will find only 550,000 American graduates with that type of training.
Approximately 400,000 foreign students come to America every year to learn from the best -- and about 60 percent will train in technology and science fields. You don't need a STEM degree to realize it would be a good idea to offer green cards to STEM graduates who want to stay here and contribute.
In a rare show of bipartisan bonhomie, Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) recently joined together to file the Startup 2.0 Act.
The legislation would create two new types of visas, one for international students who obtain a U.S. degree in the STEM fields and another that offers permanent residence to immigrants who establish successful U.S.-based companies that create American jobs. Legislatively speaking, this is one of several pro-business immigration initiatives in the congressional pipeline.
But, with Congress being the La Brea Tar Pit of legislation these days, the Obama administration needs to take action.
And, realizing our economy needs the skilled farm worker as much as it needs the skilled engineer, what about the agriculture sector?
Production of high-value agricultural products such as fresh fruits, vegetables and milk is a big business job creator in the U.S., at least for now. Economists estimate that every skilled farm worker on America's farms sustains two to three jobs in the farm-dependent economy.
Here too, the fix ought to be legislative.
Instead, we have congressional inaction, while the Obama administration is spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on a scattershot immigration enforcement approach that is destabilizing our skilled farm labor force, threatening to essentially outsource crop production to China because of the scarcity of skilled farmhands in America.
The biggest culprit is the I-9 audit.
Across America, farmers are subject to (seemingly) random audits of employee records by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) even though they have properly completed employment authorization paperwork for their workforce. To the best of the employer's knowledge, the documents presented at time of hiring are legitimate; many times, skilled and trusted workers have worked on their farm for years, if not decades.
Keep in mind, experts across the board estimate that anywhere between 50 and 70 percent of our nation's agricultural workforce are unauthorized immigrants.
Given the high number of unauthorized workers on most farms, ICE routinely audits family farmers who are doing everything the right way but are themselves struggling with a broken immigration system. As a result, every year, hundreds of agricultural employers are forced to fire thousands of farm workers who have become more family than staff.
To no one's surprise, these workers -- who have families of their own -- are not self-deporting from the country. Rather, because they are skilled workers with few legal protections, they are pushed into the hands of unscrupulous contractors who pay less, provide worse job conditions, and serve to undermine the original family farmer.
Even the Obama administration realizes problems lie ahead.
A May 2012 study by the US Department of Agriculture found that "a large reduction in the number of unauthorized workers in all sectors of the U.S. economy would lead to a longrun reduction in output and exports in both agriculture and the broader economy."
In order to stave off disaster, the administration needs to prioritize I-9 audits on truly bad employers and use its executive authority to create an emergency legal status for America's skilled agriculture workforce.
This is not our mothers' formula for job creation. The world is growing too fast and the economy is changing too quickly for us to rely on old ways of thinking.
Keeping the best minds here means launching companies that employ American workers.
And having family farms that can focus on putting food on our tables, not paperwork through the wringer, means that tomato you eat is grown in America.
Without these changes, your iPhone may not be the only Apple made in China.
Follow Ali Noorani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/anoorani
David Leopold: Marco Rubio's Immigration Pivot: A Search for Solutions or Politics as Usual?
Yeah, things like rule-of-law, sovereignty, citizenship, etc. are so passe. Open border race to the bottom is the way to go. It's been great so far, hasn't it?
Honeywell, Microsoft, American Express and many others are continuing their practice since 2004 of bringing in foreign workers to be trained by their American counterparts, then take their jobs. The American workers are threatened with loss of severance pay if they do not comply with quality training. Watch Dan Rather Reports' online video of "No Thanks For Everything" that exposes this despicable behavior to oust older, higher paid workers in order to get and keep lower paid, and easier to control through deportation threats, foreign workers.
We have skilled workers in this country. Its just that American Businesses no longer want to pay them a decent wage. This is one of the biggest falsehoods placed on this economy today.
Migrant workers are the WORST-PAID workers in America -- doing some of the hardest work -- a fraction of what it would take to attract Americans. Ban the illegals and wages would have to rise. Maybe dramatically. Who knows -- they might have to pay a middle class wage and benefits like a garbage man job. Break my heart! Pay up!
Mr Noorani -- There is nothing in the laws of economics or the Constitution that says that rich people have the right to poor people that they can pay poorly.
Those who advocate the right of employers to pay poverty-level wages for hard work are garbage themselves.
Across America, farmers are subject to (seemingly) random audits of employee records by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) even though they have properly completed employment authorization paperwork for their workforce. To the best of the employer's knowledge, the documents presented at time of hiring are legitimate; many times, skilled and trusted workers have worked on their farm for years, if not decades."
Employers hide behind, we didn't know. But now with new E-Verify they say that. We need a national E-Verify law.
"A May 2012 study by the US Department of Agriculture found that "a large reduction in the number of unauthorized workers in all sectors of the U.S. economy would lead to a longrun reduction in output and exports in both agriculture and the broader economy."
The Myth of Illegal Immigration and Food Prices
"First of all, agriculture is not a labor intensive business. The US supplies all the food it needs, plus exports billion of dollars to other countries, using very few people. In 1870, between 70% and 80% of the US population worked in agriculture. Today, less than 1% of the population works in agriculture. At last count there were only 821,000 people in the US employed in agriculture. This is out of a total civilian workforce of 153,904,000. There are 312,000,000 people in the US and these 821,000 workers produce enough to feed everybody, plus export food to the rest of the world. By 2018, agricultural employment in the US is expected to decrease to 804,400, even though the US population will be increasing."
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/fulano_de_tal/2011/aug/18/the-myth-of-illegal-immigration-and-food-prices/
Companies will complain about not enough engineers, while what they mean is not enough engineers who will work for 75% of the salary they currently command. So due to this shortage they can lobby for more H1Bs so they can find someone who _will_ work for 75% of the salary.
I don't really blame the companies, I'd do same thing. I do blame the politicians for falling for this transparent trickery.
The Elite benefit more than anyone from illegal aliens. Cheap gardeners, cheap housekeepers, cheap maids, cheap roofers, cheap plumbers, cheap carpenters, etc. Romney himself had illegal aliens working for him when he was the Governor of Massachusetts. (2)
Reference:
1. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/obamas-record-high-deportations-draw-hispanic-scorn/
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-lamarche/romney-poor-people_b_1254487.html
No doubt that the elite benefit more than anyone from illegal aliens. Obviously the people who took over the Democratic Party from people like me don't give a damn about "the working man" any more.
So that is the great irony. The leadership of both parties is hostile to the working man (he's just not fashionable). However, the peasant rebellion in the Republican Party (actually mostly Reagan Democrats) may force Romney's hand until he shafts them.
Maybe they should wear Yves St Laurent or Gucci if they want Nancy Pelosi to look after their interests.
Those of you who want farm visa or STEM/Startup reform should tell your Congressmen to support comprehensive immigration reform because you will not get preferential treatment compared to other stakeholders who are equally deserving.
Why are people who want more immigrants entitled to lie about a nonexistant shortage of labor? What makes you entitled?
How is the system broken when there are an unlimited number of agricultural visas available for farms?
*yawn*
Just more rhetoric from the open borders crowd.
How big of a problem is this? California LAO office estimates that the underground economy in California alone is between 40-100 billion dollars a year.
We should understand that in these states, California and Texas (and others), the lack of immigration enforcement is not an accident. The Texas legislature considered more than a hundred bills aimed at immigration reform last year. None of them made it to a vote. In Texas, the main force in the Congress is the Lt. Governor. In thanks for his efforts, the Lt. Governor will probably be promoted to U.S. Senator in November.
The so called shortage of STEM (science and engineering) candidates is called into question when one considers the millions of unemployed, or underemployed, engineers and scientists already in the country. "Instead of filling needs and encouraging innovation, universities have been overproducing graduates in many of the STEM majors. The problem is not one of too little supply of STEM professionals, but of too little demand for their services." (1)
Instead of hiring immigrants to fill shortages, companies like Microsoft hire immigrants because they are willing to work for less compensation.
We should accommodate the truly gifted scientists and engineers from around the world, but the number of visas should be in the hundreds, not the tens or hundreds of thousands. Four hundred per year would a logical "ballpark" quota.
The second of Mr. Noorani's points is that the agriculture industry is overwhelmed by paperwork, especially the dreaded I-9 audit. This is a good point. Our systems that verify immigration status need modernizing. Fortunately there is a system available called E-Verify that is already in use in some states. It would require about an hour of data input per employee by an employer, but after that, the systems would be a credible stance against audit. (2)
1. http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2698
2. http://everifyandi9news.com/
If Noorani is correct and there is now an emergency to legalize farm workers, Obama's policy is working, but this is the bottom line:
No relief for farmers and farm workers unless the other 9 million suffering undocumented immigrants are legalized at the same time.
Farm visa reform and STEM/Startup visa reform must be used as bargaining chips to achieve broad legalization.
7 million jobs for American citizens
By the end of 2004, the U.S. was in negative job growth territory. It remained there through the end of Bush's term and into the Great Recession. It is estimated we have lost nearly 15 million jobs to outsourcing since 2003. And still counting...