A Seemingly Simple Problem: America Has a Labor Shortage and Migrants Are Dying for Jobs

On America’s side of the border, a labor shortage is hampering a struggling economy; on the Mexican side, Latin American job-seekers are clamoring to fill American jobs. Why, then, is there no better solution than leaving so many would-be migrants to fall prey to crime cartels that profit from smuggling them across the border?The immigration debate is bound to heat up after yesterday’s news that at least 46 migrants suffocated to death in an abandoned tractor-trailer near San Antonio. “Many of them had been sprinkled with steak seasoning in a possible attempt by smugglers to ward off authorities,” the Texas Tribune reports.While yesterday’s discovery was ghastly, it is far from unique. Last year at least 650 people died as they attempted to cross America’s southern border illegally. Some of them were criminals, but the vast majority were seeking jobs in America that pay far more than those in their countries of origin. At the same time these people are dying while desperate to find work, an acute shortage in the American labor market is contributing to the economic woes that are burgeoning even as we emerge from the pandemic. In March, 5.5 million more job openings were registered than there were people available to fill them, according to the Department of Labor.By American standards, the pay for the vast majority of those jobs is low — but not so by Mexican or other Central American standards. In all likelihood, some of the busboys you’ve noticed while eating at restaurants, your home cleaning lady, or your landscaper can tell a horror story or two about what they went through to get those jobs. So can many of the cowhands, melon-pickers, or factory employees in your area. Most of those laborers “want to be here not to help the criminal groups that smuggle them in but to work,” Rice University’s José Iván Rodriguez-Sanchez, told the Sun. “American companies need workers and foreign-born people need jobs. It is an ideal match,” was how the university’s Baker Institute summed up a paper he wrote on the issue. While America debates immigration endlessly, its two main political parties seem to prefer using the issue as a cudgel to attack opponents rather than attempting to find solutions. On Monday, shortly after the bodies were discovered near San Antonio, Governor Abbott of Texas sent out a tweet placing the blame on President Biden.Republicans often accuse their opponents of negligent border controls, while Democrats point to the other side’s cruelty to asylum seekers and migrants. Some constructive attempts to solve the immigration mess have been offered over the years, but worsening political recriminations make it nearly impossible to pass serious legislation that would result in an adequate supply of foreign laborers being available to labor markets that need them. Representative Maria Salazar of Florida is the latest to take a stab, with a bill dubbed the Dignity Act. Along with fellow Republicans, Ms. Salazar proposes to tighten border controls; enact a legal, streamlined path for the undocumeted to remain in America; and, most importantly, raise the number of temporary visas, an act that would help to “ensure that small and seasonal businesses can fulfill their labor needs and contribute to our nation’s post-pandemic economic recovery.”The future of Ms. Salazar’s bill is unclear, but the deaths at the border bring into focus how desperately such solutions are needed. To get into America, migrants often must rely on crime cartels that make millions of dollars off of them.While many are turned back at the border, they often immediately try to re-enter. Crime, exploitation, and disease affect communities on both sides of the border. “The more difficult it is to get in, the more you need a guide, a Sherpa,’’ a former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, tells the Sun. While serving in President Fox’s administration in the early 2000s, his and Secretary of State Powell’s valiant attempts at comprehensive immigration reforms ended on September 11, 2001, when America turned its attention to other matters. The problem, Mr. Castaneda contends, started in 1994, when California voters backed proposition 187, which blocked undocumented laborers’ access to state services. Due to the popularity of the act at the time, President Clinton started erecting a border barrier at Tijuana. The tightened controls replaced a porous border that had allowed for a free flow of laborers, most of whom wanted to earn American dollars while traveling to and from Mexico, rather than becoming full-fledged Americans. Since then, American presidents — up to and including Donald Trump and Joe Biden — have attempted to tighten border controls. As they did so, crossing the border illegally became “more corrupt, more profitable, and more dangerous,” Mr. Castaneda, a cousin of this reporter, says. As a result, the crime cartels that entered the people-smuggling business in the 1990s have seen the enterprise become ever more lucrative.While it now would be politically impossible to remove border controls, Mr. Castaneda proposes at least raising the number of H2B visas — which allow employers to sponsor foreign laborers for a limited time period — to 400,000, from the current 66,000. The San Antonio deaths should serve as a wakeup call for Washington. While filling in the gaps in America’s labor markets with foreign laborers would not solve all of the country’s immigration woes, it would significantly ease pressures at the border, where hordes are lining up as they attempt to simply make a decent, dollar-based wage.

A Seemingly Simple Problem: America Has a Labor Shortage and Migrants Are Dying for Jobs

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