Immigration Reform Can End U.S. Supply Chain Crisis: Academics

Over the past two months, business leaders and their political allies have returned to an old refrain: “Where are the workers?”

Photo Insert: An overhaul of the US immigration system is seen as one of the key solutions to the shortage of workers.

With bottlenecks wreaking havoc on the global supply chain, fresh claims of a nationwide labor shortage have given way to familiar questions about US immigration policy, David Phelps and Alexander Stephens reported recently for Foreign Policy.

In October, the CEO of Domino’s Pizza told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that a decline in net immigration is hurting the restaurant industry.

“We literally have to start thinking about an immigration policy that involves taking in people,” Cramer added. Days earlier, on Oct. 12, the Biden administration announced an end to immigration raids in workplaces, signaling, as the New York Times wrote, “that undocumented workers are not at risk of being deported en masse.”

On Nov. 23, the newspaper reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now urging a complete “overhaul” of the US immigration system “to allow more work visas and green cards.”

Phelps and Stephens, both professors at the University of Michigan, said that if policymakers want to make the US a better destination for low-wage immigrant workers, they might revisit a piece of legislation enacted 35 years ago this month.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was the last major reconfiguration of the legal framework that looms over recent conversations about immigration and labor.

Though it is best remembered for creating a path to legal status for some 3 million people living in the US, the legislation also included provisions to make America a more hostile place for undocumented workers, largely in response to nativist and protectionist demands.

It earmarked millions of dollars for policing the country’s borders and made it a felony for undocumented people to work in the US. Proponents of this approach described it as keeping the “front door” open to legal immigration while “closing the back door” to undocumented immigrants.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic