US needs more immigrants, says Biden's economic advisors

Immigrants could be the answer to America's labor shortage.

Immigrants could be the solution to the labor shortage facing the United States. There is a shortage of health professionals, K-12 teachers, tech workers, farm workers and a workers in other professions.  President Biden's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) believe more immigrants could alleviate the country's labor shortage.

In the newly released annual Economic Report of the President, the White House Council of Economic Advisors includes an unequivocal set of facts that immigrants and immigration reform are key to growing and strengthening the American economy.

The "silver tsunami" of Baby Boomer retirements coupled with the US lower birth rate creates a labor shortage, the annual report says. The US needs to reform its immigration system to allow more people to come into the country and transform workplace practices.

“Necessity is the mother of invention," CEA Chair Cecilia Rouse told Reuters. Besides immigration, the US also needs to change workplace traditions -- such as creating a work/nonwork balance, employer sponsored childcare, a shorter work week and allowing more working from home -- to increase incentives for employees.

Rouse said changes were imperative to ensure US growth: "These are not political issues; these are economic issues. If we want to continue the kinds of economic prosperity that we count on … we have to have all hands on deck."

"For much of the last year, there were two job openings for every unemployed person—an unprecedented gap between labor demand and supply that has shifted the balance of power between workers and businesses," the CEA report states.

"Slowing population growth and declining labor force participation are significant headwinds for U.S. labor supply," the report continues.

Presently, while the majority of immigrants are from Latin America, the fastest growing group of immigrants are coming from Asia with the vast majority coming from China, India and the Philippines. Immigrants from Asia are projected to be the largest immigrant group by 2065, according to the Pew Research Center.

The workers provided by the undocumented and immigration would offset the aging demographics and boost innovation, without a big impact on the wages and employment of the American-born population, says the CEA report.

Immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented individuals would also help increase the labor supply, the report says. Additional immigration reforms suggested by the report could include removing per-country caps on employment, expanding diversity lottery visas, and expanding the J-1 exchange visa program, which would bring additional faculty, scientists, and students to the United States for training and sharing knowledge and methods.

Immigrants from Asia also start their own businesses, from modest salons and restaurants to high tech companies such as YouTube, Snap, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Zoom. According to the US Census, in 2020, there were 612,194 Asian-owned businesses employing about 5.2 million in the United States, the highest among all minority groups, thus injecting vital energy into the US economy.

Meanwhile, new research released Wednesday by the CATO Institute on the fiscal impact of immigrants and immigration finds, “the net fiscal impact of immigrants is more positive than it is for native‐​born Americans and positive overall for the federal and state/​local governments.”

These studies are just the latest in an overwhelming and consistent body of research that shows why modernizing our immigration system, including legalizing long-settled undocumented immigrants, is both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.

Farmers are having a hard time finding workers to harvest their produce.

“The economic consensus remains clear and overwhelming: getting our economy right today and in the future requires immigrants and immigration. Despite this reality, Republicans are blocking the legislative fixes we sorely need to keep our economy humming and workers operating on a level playing field, which would benefit all workers, consumers and producers in our economy, said Douglas Rivlin, Director of Communication for America’s Voice.

"Every American pays a daily price for the nativism that grips the Republican Party."

"The worst part of the GOP obstruction may just be the reality that they know the importance of immigrants yet continue to block a legislative overhaul. Republicans know full well that immigrants help make the American economy great while at the same time bashing immigrants as a threat.

"Top GOP politicians in particular understand – whether it’s Donald Trump employing and exploiting undocumented workers in his family businesses, Gov. Ron Desantis’ Florida, which relies on immigrant service and agricultural workers up and down the state or Kevin McCarthy representing the Central Valley of California and its agriculture sector that relies on immigrant labor," says Rivlin. "The GOP’s opposition to immigration is political, hypocritical, and self-defeating for our country.”

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