The Migrant Influx Could Help With the Labor Shortage

The surge at the border isn’t going away. Making more work visas available would solve two problems

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"the Biden administration doesn’t have a problem with moving illegal immigrants around the country after they arrive here. It just has a problem with Republican governors doing it.

When the administration transports migrants from Texas to New York, as it has been doing on the down-low for more than a year, it’s called “resettlement.” When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott does the same thing in a much more transparent fashion, it’s labeled “human trafficking.” The proper name for all this is political theater"

"Immigrants are being sent to liberal strongholds such as Chicago, Washington and Martha’s Vineyard, a celebrity vacation destination in Massachusetts. States and cities that for years have described themselves as “sanctuaries” for undocumented migrants—including violent criminals—and have ostentatiously refused to cooperate with federal immigration-enforcement officials, are now getting a tiny taste of what it’s like these days to be a southern-border state. Local healthcare and education resources are being overburdened, social safety nets are being strained, and lawmakers in Washington are pointing fingers at one another."

"There’s a better way. New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters last week that he’s asking the White House to expedite immigrant work visas."

"In Canada and Australia (countries with immigration systems that Donald Trump and his supporters have cited favorably) the national government allows regional and local authorities to act more independently on migrant issues. “Under the Canadian Constitution, for example, immigration is a concurrent power jointly exercised by both the federal and provincial governments,” writes George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin in his 2020 book, “Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.” “Australia also has a program of state-based visas for workers.”

Even here in the U.S., there have been times when the federal government has tinkered with immigration policy to address regional labor shortages. At the urging of the California and Texas congressional delegations during World War II, the U.S. created the Bracero Program to allow hundreds of thousands of Mexican farm workers to enter the country legally as seasonal laborers. A 1980 Congressional research report concluded that, “without question,” the program was “instrumental in ending the illegal alien problem of the mid-1940s and 1950s.”"

"Tight U.S. labor markets, stemming in part from overly generous pandemic relief efforts that made not working more attractive, have only added to the problem. The upshot is that illegal border crossings continue at a record pace, while Democratic leaders pretend there is no serious immigration problem to address and that anyone who says otherwise is xenophobic."