Immigration Policies Threaten U.S. Growth

Asparagus rots in the fields of Imperial County for a lack of farm hands. A hospital in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods threatens to shut down because it can’t find enough skilled nurses. California’s high-tech firms warn of a coming crisis as they approach the annual limit on hiring foreign programmers.

A severe labor shortage, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s, is hampering a wide range of sectors across the country.

But in contrast with earlier periods of low unemployment, businesses today cannot easily turn to immigrants to fill the gaps.

Instead, more than a decade of restrictive legislation and policies that targeted legal as well as illegal immigration has come back to haunt the economy and threaten to pinch off its growth.

The limits, imposed to protect the jobs of Americans during a prolonged recession, have made the importation of even highly trained professionals, such as engineers, increasingly difficult and time-consuming. In the case of the so-called unskilled, such as nannies and laborers, it is virtually impossible to legally bring workers to the U.S.

Also, processing times for the visas and labor certification letters necessary to bring in workers have lengthened dramatically--in some cases from a matter of months to years--which has the effect of shrinking the immigrant work force even more.

“There’s no question that there’s a growing labor shortage, and [restricted] immigration is part of the reason,” said Frank Sharry, director of the Washington-based National Immigration Forum. “But we’re still in this anti-immigration hangover. I don’t think the powers that be have quite gotten that the laws they put on the books three years ago are causing problems.”

There are signs, however, that folks in Washington are beginning to listen. From a bill to allow up to 500 foreign nurses to work in poor urban neighborhoods, which recently cleared the House Judiciary Committee, to a resurrected proposal to create a guest farm worker program, legislation that didn’t stand a chance a few years ago is getting at least an audience in Congress.

Privately, some respected legislators and lobbyists even raise the possibility of another amnesty program for undocumented immigrants.

The prospect comes not a moment too soon for employers in strapped industries such as health care, agriculture and the hotel business, where job calls go unanswered and hiring raids by competitors are becoming increasingly common.

“I’m a third-generation farmer, and I have never seen it this bad,” said Steve Scaroni, president of the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Assn. “We’ve lost asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, peaches, grapes. These are things I know for a fact. And I’ve heard of more. It’s not just Imperial County. It’s statewide and it’s nationwide.”

So far, the labor shortages have been spotty--specific to certain industries and regions. And their relationship to shifting immigration laws and policies is, in many cases, complex. What is clear, however, is that a 15-year trend toward restricting immigration is running headlong into an economic boom that is gobbling up workers.

“We are living with concepts and laws that are largely outmoded,” said Darryl Buffenstein, an immigration attorney who consults with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “And it is my very firm belief that the effect it has on the economy is dramatic. It’s not something that’s been documented, but I see it every day in my practice.”

Buffenstein’s expertise is in white-collar immigrants, particularly the foreign-educated programmers and engineers who have helped drive the growth in information technology. In the immigration-law world, those workers are relatively blessed: Congress last year agreed to double the number of temporary visas for high-skilled immigrants under the H-1B program, to 115,000.

Demand is still greater than supply, however, and attorneys expect the visas to run out by late May, four months before the end of the U.S. fiscal year. Negotiations have begun to try to raise the cap again, but opposition is strong, particularly among those who argue that older U.S. workers can and should be trained for the jobs.

California employers also are hamstrung by a backlog in the local Department of Labor office, which must certify the need for immigrant tech workers. Processing times in the California office run as long as four months, while in Vermont, applications are turned around in a matter of days. The time lag becomes increasingly important as the visa ceiling nears.

Buffenstein noted that before a 1990 immigration reform law, there was no limit to the number of temporary visas for high-skilled workers. “Why now,” he said, “at a time of such incredible economic performance, are we even having a debate about a cap?”

In contrast, hospitals facing a shortage of nurses would be grateful for a cap of any size. Four years ago, during a time of mergers and layoffs in the health-care industry, temporary visas for immigrant nurses were eliminated, in part to protect U.S. jobs and wages.

The unforeseen effect on hospitals--particularly those in tough inner-city neighborhoods and rural backwaters that have trouble attracting and retaining nurses--has been devastating.

The elimination of visas didn’t cause the shortage. That grew out of demographic shifts, changes in health-care systems and waning interest in nursing by students and colleges. But it took away a crutch that hospitals once relied on to get them through shortages.

“Historically, foreign-educated nurses have been used to fill the gaps,” said Barbara Nichols, chief executive of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools in Philadelphia. “They work mostly evenings, nights, weekends and in areas where a majority of nurses will not work.”

During the last U.S. nursing shortage, in the late 1980s, a temporary-visa program with no cap was hastily created, paving the way for about 30,000 foreign nurses a year. The program was allowed to expire in 1995.

A new shortage of nurses, particularly those with special skills, has caused hand-wringing in hospitals across the country. Just last month, St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard announced it would close one of its acute-care wings and curtail some elective surgeries for lack of nurses.

And in Chicago, the shortage had threatened to close an entire hospital in the poor and crime-ridden neighborhood of Englewood. The near-collapse of St. Bernard Hospital prompted Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) to introduce legislation to create another temporary-visa program for nurses. In a nod to organized labor, however, the program he envisions is far smaller and more limited than previous ones.

Only 500 nurses would be allowed in on a temporary basis each year under Rush’s nursing relief bill, which recently cleared the House Judiciary Committee and is headed for a vote by the full House. The law also limits recruiting to relatively large hospitals serving poor communities. “I can assure you,” he pledged in introducing the bill to Congress, “that this proposal does not have a detrimental effect on American nurses.”

To hear farmers talk, the shortage of agricultural workers is even more acute than that of nurses--and more threatening to the economy. It is perhaps the most urgent of shortages, because crops won’t wait. “We can’t just shut down the production line for a week or two,” said Jack King, national affairs director for the California Farm Bureau.

The roots of the farm worker shortage differ greatly from those for skilled workers, however, having to do with tougher enforcement of existing laws rather than new laws. Record-level staffing of Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico border has made illegal crossings far more difficult, risky and costly.

Growers from Imperial County to the Central Valley said the enforcement effort, along with periodic audits by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have cut deeply into their work force, which they concede is composed primarily of illegal immigrants holding false documents.

They’ve also lost scores of workers to the expanding U.S. economy, where low-skilled immigrants have found more stable, less physically taxing work in restaurants, in hotels and on construction sites.

Last year, during the peak summer harvesting season, growers in the Central Valley were about 80,000 workers short of the normal 230,000, said Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno. Raids from desperate out-of-state growers added to the uncertainty. “Contractors were pulling workers right off the fields, offering $75 and a free ride to Oregon,” Cunha said.

The raisin harvest was extended a month, and still some grapes were lost.

In a region with double-digit unemployment, reports of such severe shortages have been met with skepticism. Farm worker advocates argue that improving wages and working conditions and guaranteeing more stable employment might pull in the chronically unemployed and create a more humane and long-term solution than a guest worker program.

But Cunha and other growers, who insist the high Farm Belt unemployment figures are inflated by fraud, said 20% wage increases during last year’s raisin harvest failed to solve the problem. Attempts to recruit welfare and unemployment recipients also failed, in part because the state was reluctant to funnel workers into short-term, temporary jobs.

“We really put a lot of effort into it,” Cunha said. “But when it came time, we put in our job order requests to the state, and we were lucky to fill 1% of them.”

Now California growers are bracing for a new season of labor shortages and crop losses, and more intense competition for what workers they do find.

“Last year they barely got by,” said King of the California Farm Bureau. “This year we’re already seeing serious problems in the Imperial Valley. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the state. We could be in real trouble here.”

*

* EMPLOYMENT GAINS: The return of the chronically unemployed to the job market has helped fuel the economy and eased social ills. A1

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Coming to Stay

Legal immigration of all types dropped in 1997, the last year for which figures are available. Numbers of immigrants admitted as permanent residents (green card holders):

All Categories:

In thousands

1996: 915,900

1997: 798,378

*

Employment-Based*:

In thousands

1996: 117,499

1997: 90,607

*People admitted specifically because they have certain needd job skills.

Source: Immigration and Naturalization Service