George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney, recently opened an investigation against the city’s hotels. The local Prosecutor’s Office began the investigation after learning that the hotel sector has hired undocumented Venezuelan immigrants to do the work of cleaning employees and maids who are currently on strike demanding better conditions and salaries. “The mistreatment of vulnerable workers and their exploitation will not be tolerated,” Gascón stated. Beyond the authorities finding violations of workers’ rights, the case has reopened an old debate. America needs more workers. And many of these need papers to be able to fill the 9.6 million vacancies in the country.
The White House received the mayors of Denver and Chicago last Thursday. These were representing a group of five Democratic councilors who are asking Joe Biden’s Government to expedite the procedures for temporary work permits. This would help the thousands of immigrants living in shelters have an economic support while immigration authorities resolve their cases. In the process, it would allow cities to relieve a humanitarian emergency in the face of the record numbers of border crossings that have been registered in the current Administration. “The crisis is that we have people here who desperately want to work. And we have employers who desperately want to hire them. And we have a federal government that stands between employers who want to hire and those who want to work,” said Mike Johnston, the mayor of Denver. Cities have requested $5 billion [unos 4.655 millones de euros] to face the situation, but Biden has only asked Congress for 1.4 billion.
Johnston has been joined by the mayors of Houston, New York and Los Angeles, which, along with Chicago, are the most populated cities in the United States. They are all in need of labor. Los Angeles, for example, launched a job fair this week in hopes of filling 7,000 municipal employee vacancies. Where they are needed most is in the cleaning and services area, where 20% of the places are free.
“If every unemployed person suddenly found a job in the United States, we would still have nearly three million job openings,” says Stephanie Ferguson, the employment director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Only 12 of the country’s 50 states have a larger workforce than they had before the pandemic. The economic recovery in the vast majority of entities has been much slower due to several factors. Among these is the change in priorities of many of those who have left their jobs, early retirements, but also less migration during the health emergency.
Net migration was at one of its lowest points between 2020 and 2021 in the United States. The country only received 247,000 people then. The index rebounded in 2022, when more than a million people were added. It was the year with the highest figures since 2016 and served to demonstrate that the trend was in the direction of recovering pre-pandemic levels. “It is clear that the drop in migration to the United States has caused damage. The impact to the workforce still reverberates through our economy,” writes Jon Baselice, of the Chamber of Commerce.
Some economists believe that expanding the number of H-2B visas the United States grants would help solve the worker shortage. This visa allows non-agricultural employees to work for nine months. This type of leave is common among restaurant, construction, and factory employees. These are some of the sectors where hiring is most urgent. The Cato Institute (a think tank progressive) estimated, in March of this year, that 1.8 million people are stuck waiting for some type of work visa.
The country has been granting around 66,000 H-2B visas annually for years. The model was created in the 1990s and the quota is considered “arbitrary and outdated” for an economy that has grown fourfold since then. The Biden Government increased this type of visa in 2022 and until January 2025, when the legislature ends. The Executive reserved 20,000 temporary work visas for nationals of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the nationalities that made up the first large wave of migration after the arrival of the Democrat to the White House.
“A much higher limit, up to ten times what is allowed today, should be authorized,” said economists Gordon Hanson of Harvard and Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth University. Academics argue that increasing the number of H-2B visas would give the Government more tools for legal and orderly migration, one of the objectives of the Biden Administration.
The ceiling on the number of H-2B visas was set so as not to affect the wages and conditions of American workers. Economists Michael Clemens and Ethan Lewis argued in an October 2022 essay that firms that hired this type of immigrants increased their income and also “weakly” promoted the hiring of local employees. “A permanent increase [en el número de visas disponibles] It can induce a better response in investment and hiring throughout the year,” they point out. The conclusion of the study is that this type of worker complements the American workforce, not replaces it, as Republican and conservative sectors claim.
The economists’ suggestion is not only to increase the ceiling for temporary visas, but also for those for skilled workers, known as H-1B. These also suffer from a major system jam. This year, the Government received 780,000 petitions, but only 85,000 are available for fiscal year 2024. In 2023, only one in six applicants received one. The United States has some of the workers it needs. But these do not have papers.
Follow all the information Economy and Business in Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter
The Five Day agenda
The most important economic quotes of the day, with the keys and context to understand their scope.
RECEIVE IT IN YOUR EMAIL
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#populated #cities #United #States #Biden #expedite #work #permits #immigrants