Building workers line up for the MSG Sphere topping service at The Venetian on May 24, 2022.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | 2 a. m.
Iris Ramos Jones claims she is aware of the difficulties faced by refugees who seek to establish a life in the United States.
She moved to Nevada ten years ago after leaving Argentina and finally finding her market in real estate. She was chosen by the governor in September. In order to advertise opportunities for refugees, migrants, and aspiring Americans in Nevada, Joe Lombardo has been appointed chairman of the Nevada Office for New Americans, which was established as a result of a bill in the 2019 Legislature.
Ramos Jones, who joined local leaders on Tuesday to raise the issue of a lack of workers in blue-collar sectors like structure and urges lawmakers to increase work authorization for immigrants,” I really believe that once an immigrant is given an opportunity, we’re going to get it and we’re going to take it, and we’re going to get it and we’re going to get it.”
The Latin Chamber of Commerce, whose president and CEO Peter Gezman stated,” These conversations can lead to policy shifts that benefit all parties,” hosted the conversation. Local leaders in the fields of construction, agriculture, and legislation were also present at the event, which was hosted by the bipartisan American Business Immigration Coalition Action ( ABIC Action ).
How serious is the orange- collar employee shortage? More than 100 000 people are required to fill empty building positions in Las Vegas, according to Amanda Moss, Southern Nevada Home Builders Association senior director of state affairs.
According to Associated Builders and Contractors, a national organization that promotes the sector, an estimated 1.9 million construction workers may leave their jobs for various sectors in 2024. The business needs to recruit 501, 000 more workers in addition to their regular choosing to join labor demand, according to the group.
If the federal government began the process for granting immigrants work authorization, those positions might be filled right away, according to Moss.
It’s gotten so difficult for the construction industry that “lots of major, key contractors” are having to turn down work due to a lack of employees, said Ann Barnett, CEO of the Nevada Contractors Association.
According to Donnie Gibson, CEO of the Las Vegas contractor company Civil Werx, one of the biggest causes of this decline in workers is the aging population choosing to retire, as well as the rising interest from younger Americans in earning a college degree.
Because those employees are not there, Moss said,” We need to look at ways to bring in immigrant labor that does have a propensity to work hard and wants to swing the hammer.”
About 18.4 % of Nevada residents in 2021 were born outside of the United States, almost 13 % live with at least one immigrant parent, and roughly one- fifth of Nevada’s labor force is made up of immigrants, the American Immigration Council said. Roughly 144 immigrants a week come to Nevada, Ramos Jones said.
Throughout the nation, immigrants are more likely to be working- age, with 79 % of them being between 16 and 64 years old.
In spite of the fact that they are unable to take advantage of all government services, immigrants in Nevada paid$ 1.2 billion in state taxes and local taxes in 2021. This means they are more likely to be active in the workforce and contribute economically as consumers and taxpayers.
Through programs like the H-1B visa for specialty occupations or the J-1 physician visa, immigrants can be sponsored by their employers for permanent residence or to apply for visas that grant them permanent or temporary employment in the United States. The U. S. may grant up to 675, 000 visas annually for family, employment and diversity, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
One solution, according to James O’Neill, director of legislative affairs at ABIC Action, might be expanding work authorization through a parole power. According to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “allows an individual who may be inadmissible or otherwise ineligible for admission into the United States to be paroled into the United States for a temporary period.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D- Ill., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration issues, is calling for President Joe Biden to use his authority to expand work authorization for the spouses of U. S. citizens. According to O’Neill, expanding work authorization to the roughly 1.1 million undocumented people living with citizen spouses would give them access to jobs that” could be transformal to whatever industry they want to work for.”
In an effort to attract more workers, O’Neill added that he wanted to see the expansion of the parole program for immigrants who have been in the country for more than ten years.
According to a report released late last year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed that if every single person who is currently unemployed got a job today, there would still be about three and a half million open positions that needed to be filled, and that what we have is a numbers problem. ” Any reasonable solution to that problem involves adding people to the workforce and allowing more people to work in the roles that we need them to,” said the statement.
