Is the Department of Labor fueling our labor shortage?

Days before the midterm elections, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh issued a stark warning regarding an imminent economic catastrophe should Congress fail to introduce and implement a comprehensive immigration reform package.

“We need a bipartisan fix here,” Walsh told CNBC. “I’ll tell you right now, if we don’t solve immigration … we’re talking about worrying about recessions, we’re talking about inflation. I think we’re going to have a bigger catastrophe if we don’t get more workers into our society, and we do that by immigration.”    

While this statement is true, from an immigration perspective, Walsh should look closer to home — his own Department of Labor. When most think of immigration, they think about the border. But immigration is so much more. Beyond the well-known agencies and departments that we know, such as border patrol agencies, tens of thousands of bureaucrats across the government handle immigration. One of those agencies is Labor and their ability, or lack thereof, to process legal immigration, is in turn, fueling the border crisis.   

Even though there are concerns propagated by the media that immigrants take jobs from Americans, this is a myth. For an immigrant to be sponsored for employment, the Department of Labor has extensive processes in place to ensure that Americans are not denied work in favor of immigrants. Before employers are allowed to sponsor an immigrant for employment, they must first offer those jobs to Americans. It’s not simply a rubber stamp process and it takes years to document it all. Employers must record who applies and who is hired. If American workers are not pursuing the position, then the Department of Labor works to ensure fair wages are being offered to immigrant workers that will work in that role.   

Labor’s immigration component though, due to COVID-19, backlogs, and delays at other government agencies, is broken. Just over a year ago, immigrant workers seeking visas for entry-level positions took only 10 months for the total Department of Labor process. In 2020 the application processing time took as little as four months. In October 2022, the total process now takes 18-24 months with the application alone taking up to 18 months to process, leaving multitudes of willing and able workers waiting while American businesses suffer. Currently, there are over 10 million job openings in the United States, but only 6 million unemployed workers. In manufacturing alone, an industry heavily impacted by the labor crisis, current statistics point to a shortage of 8 million people by 2030, with a potential revenue loss of $607 billion.   

At a time when our government should be working at all cylinders to lessen our labor shortages, the Biden administration has let Labor slide farther and farther into backlogs and delays. There are many common sense and easily implementable changes that the Department of Labor can make to improve the immigration process. It can change the fee structure to raise additional funds, it can change how it receives documents, or even collaborate more with state agencies to lessen its own backlog. Finally, Labor could prioritize cases of employers providing essential services to the American economy. Right now, Labor does far too much with too little resources and expectations.   

When Labor initially began its immigration processing, it was designed to be like the IRS’s tax return system where the filings were to be quick, and the government was only to audit bad actors. Instead, Labor reviews all its applications slowly and manually. If we would not tolerate the IRS working this way, we shouldn’t tolerate other government agencies doing so either.   

Foodservice, manufacturing, small businesses or businesses in rural areas should be given priority in processing so that the everyday needs of Americans can be more effectively met. Taking these simple actions could cut down certain parts of the process significantly. Allowing state agencies to take the work of processing parts of this application should be attractive as it would give the state agencies the opportunity to meet the business needs of their own local constituents and give them tools to fight recession within their jurisdictions.   

When employers cannot rely on a functioning, vibrant, immigration system and procedures, they are pressured to work outside of that system. Labor must do all in its power to make sure that does not happen. 

While it’s encouraging that leaders across government are demanding change, we need those leaders to do more. They must not just exhort Congress to act, but they must do what they can in their own backyards to make changes. Our bureaucracy’s stagnation and inability to adapt to the ever-changing needs of the American public not only hurts the “huddled masses” at the border, but harms the global market, consumers and American business leaders nationwide.    

Chris Richardson is a former U.S. diplomat and co-founder of Argo Visa and an expert on immigration policy. Richardson served in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Spain as a U.S. diplomat. Richardson resigned in protest due to President Trump’s policy dubbed the “Muslim ban” and the former president’s derogatory statements about African countries. He has advised both Democratic and Republican members of Congress and their staffers in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate on critical immigration and foreign policy issues. 

Ben McEuen serves as a senior immigration specialist at BDV Solutions. He is also a paralegal and Juris Doctor candidate at the University of Dayton School of Law.