Legal or illegal, here to stay or not — migrants should be equipped with skills

The migrant arrivals to Martha’s Vineyard are but the most recent, high-profile example of a border crisis that continues unabated. While many solutions have been proposed – including shipping refugees to sanctuary locales, sending them home en masse and granting temporary stays – no one is proposing a remedy that, even to a small extent, would benefit the asylum seekers and the communities that receive them.

Migrants who are capable of working are an economic asset. Training them and deploying them into the workforce can produce benefits that far exceed their costs.

The U.S. is confronting a significant labor shortage at all levels. There are 4.9 million more people who are not working or looking for work than there were before the pandemic. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, more than 3 million fewer Americans are participating in the labor force today compared to February 2020.

Most states are facing severe worker shortages and lingering unemployment. For example, in Missouri, there are 221,000 open jobs. In Tennessee, there are 232,000. In Indiana, there are 240,000. And in Georgia, there are 379,000.

These worker shortages exacerbate the pre-existing manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. that could result in 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, according to a new study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. The cost of those missing jobs could total $1 trillion in 2030 alone.

However, most relevant to the crisis surrounding asylum seekers is that retail and restaurant workers are more in demand than technical workers in the U.S. This is especially true in cities with large Spanish-speaking populations such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix and San Antonio.

If policymakers conclude that it makes sense to integrate migrants into the U.S. labor market, there are precedents and mechanisms, even though past experiences do not provide a blueprint for today.

One needs to go back to the executive order called the Mexican Farm Labor Program, known as the Bracero Program, in 1942. The program entailed a series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States that permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts. The Bracero Program was terminated in 1964 in part because of concerns about abuses of the program and the treatment of the Bracero workers. While the program was supposed to guarantee a minimum wage, housing and health care, many workers were subjected to low wages, very poor living and working conditions, and discrimination.

The United States currently has two guestworker programs for temporary work lasting less than a year: the H-2A program, for temporary agricultural work, and the H-2B program, for temporary nonagricultural work. Admittedly, these programs, or ones like them, would need to be broadened, deepened and funded substantially by Congress to achieve their intended results.

A recent research policy monograph by the Migration Policy Institute cites the need for a comprehensive strategy to manage migration and highlights the benefits of temporary worker programs as a promising alternative to irregular migration and one attractive to both countries.

Unquestionably, there is a dire need for workforce training of immigrants and refugees, and the Employment Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor can play a major role here. Outside the public sector, a very novel and effective initiative may be found at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, which has been exploring how targeted training can help immigrants and refugees integrate into the economy.

Program succuss requires the engagement of key parties in designing the program, an investment in trusted intermediaries, program incentives that enable refugees to access decent jobs and the provision of digital literacy and digital access. The creation of apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship programs, such as those of the Los Angeles Hospitality Training Academy, would also help.

The latest numbers indicate that Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua have overtaken Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico as the prime sending countries from the region. But make no mistake — the flow continues unabated.

Two facts are non-debatable: (1) We have a worker shortage that will not dissipate any time soon; and (2) There are immigrants and refugees who are willing and capable of performing the jobs many U.S. residents will not.

Work visas (temporary or permanent) are the solution with training part and parcel of the placement of work-capable asylum seekers. Responses such as building a wall, mass deportations and shipping asylum seekers to sanctuary cities are ineffectual palliatives. Migrants who can work, pay taxes and help alleviate the U.S. labor shortage while gaining the skills and experience necessary to achieve economic self-reliance are a net positive for the U.S., whether the migrant remains here or returns home.

Jerry Haar is a business professor at Florida International University, a global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and a senior fellow of the Council on Competitiveness.