Just 10 miles from the Rio Grande, Mike Helle’s farm is so deprived of immigrant workers that he has replaced 450 acres of labor-intensive leafy vegetables with machine-harvested crops.
In Houston, Al Flores raised the price of a plate of breasts at his barbecue restaurant as the cost of cutting doubled due to the inability of meat plants to fully service production lines with heavy immigrants. In the Dallas area, Joshua Korea raised the price of homes his company is building by $ 150,000 to cover increased costs stemming in part from a lack of immigrant labor.
After immigration to the United States declined during the Trump administration – and was almost completely halted for 18 months during the coronavirus pandemic – the country is waking up to labor shortages, partly fueled by this delay.
According to some estimates, the United States has 2 million fewer immigrants than it would have if the pace had been the same, helping the desperate struggle for workers in many sectors, from meat to housing construction, which also contributes to supply shortages and rising prices. .
“These 2 million missing immigrants are part of the reason we have a labor shortage,” said Giovanni Perry, an economist at the University of California, Davis, who calculated the shortage. “In the short term, we will adapt to this shortage in the labor market by increasing wages and prices.
Labor problems are among several factors contributing to the highest inflation in 40 years in the United States, from supply chains destroyed by the pandemic to rising energy and commodity prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Steve Camarotta, a researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies who advocates less immigration, believes that the jump in illegal immigration under President Joe Biden will compensate for the deficit left by the pandemic. He also argues that wage increases in low-paid sectors such as agriculture have made a small contribution to inflation.
“I don’t think wage growth is bad for the poor, and I don’t think it’s mathematically possible to reduce inflation by cutting wages at the bottom,” Camarota told the Associated Press.
Immigration is rapidly returning to pre-pandemic levels, researchers say, but the United States will need significant acceleration to make up for its deficit. Given the sharp decline in birth rates in the United States over the past two decades, some economists predict that the total number of potential workers will begin to shrink by 2025.
The shortage of immigrant workers is coming as the US political system shows less appetite for increased immigration. Democrats – who control all branches of the federal government and have recently been more immigration-friendly – have not tried to propose major legislation to allow more new residents to the country. A recent Gallup poll showed concerns about illegal immigration at the highest level in two decades. With tough elections for their party set in November, Democrats are increasingly divided over the Biden administration’s attempt to end pandemic-related asylum restrictions.
“At some point, we either decide to grow old and younger, or change our immigration policy,” said Douglas Holz-Ikin, an economist and former employee of President George W. Bush’s administration who is president of the center-right American Action Forum. He acknowledged that a change in immigration policy is unlikely: “Bases on both sides are so closed.”
This is certainly the case in Republican-dominated Texas, which includes the longest and busiest stretch of the southern border. In 2017, the legislature forced cities to comply with federal immigration agents looking for people who are in the United States illegally. Gov. Greg Abbott has sent the Texas National Guard to patrol the border and recently created traffic congestion by ordering more inspections at border ports.
The turnaround against immigration worries some business owners in Texas. “Immigration is very important to our workforce in the United States,” Korea said. “We just need it.”
He sees a delay of two to three months in his projects as he and his subcontractors – from drywall to plumbers to electricians – struggle with crews on the ground. Korea has raised the standard price of its homes from $ 500,000 to about $ 650,000.
“We feel it, and if we feel it at the end of the day as builders and developers, the consumer pays the price,” said Korea, who spoke in Pensacola, Florida, where he brought a construction team to service a client who failed to find workers who to repair a beach house damaged by Hurricane Sally in 2020
The share of the American population born in another country – 13.5% in the last census – is the highest since the 19th century. But even before Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, promising to reduce immigration, migration to the United States is slowing. The Great Recession has dried up many jobs that have attracted workers to the country, legally or illegally. The rising standard of living in Latin America has prompted more people to stay in place or return from the United States.
Flores, who runs a chain of Mexican restaurants as well as his barbecue restaurant, said that while the COVID-19 pandemic was a major shock to his industry, the delay in immigration has hit him hard – and not just for meat producers. who deliver the breasts to his restaurant. “You have a lot of positions that are not being filled,” he said.
He’s been steadily raising wages, up to $ 15 an hour lately. “It’s the culmination of years and years,” said Flores, who is president of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association.
Helle, who grows onions, cabbage, melons and cabbage just outside the border town of McAllen, Texas, also pays more to his workers, who are almost exclusively immigrants. People born in the United States, he says, will not work in the fields, regardless of pay.
He previously managed to find agricultural workers in the region. He has now joined a federal program to smuggle agricultural workers across the border. It is more expensive for him, but he said it was the only way to protect his crop from spoiling the ground.
Helle, 60, has been cultivating the area for decades. “I live 10 miles from the Rio Grande River and I never thought in my life that we would find ourselves in this situation.”
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