A significant portion of the problems faced by America’s already beleaguered job market has to do with the current trend in immigration policies. Foreign workers in New Jersey and around the country are experiencing delays in the processing of their applications before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
This is exacerbating the situation that laborers are dealing with – a reality that they’re forced to live with every day. The labor shortage in the U.S. was already an extremely serious situation, according to leading business organizations and policymakers.
Now, America’s troubled immigration system has become central to the issue, at a time when the economy is attempting to make a recovery. Put plainly, the U.S. economy is in desperate need of a boost rather than yet another hindrance, and it clearly can’t turn to the flawed immigration system for help.
Policies that stop workers from working
The sheer number of pending applications for employment authorization is staggering – in excess of 1.3 million as of late June 2021, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the very agency that’s responsible for processing these applications. This troubling development transcending employment immigration is such a major problem for the simple fact that immigrant workers make up such a significant portion of the U.S. workforce.
And in the midst of tighter regulations on foreign workers at the worst possible time, the population of working-age people in the United States has been steadily dwindling away. On top of this, companies across all industries have been dealing with staffing issues.
Meanwhile, able-bodied workers are standing by at the ready, eager to fill any role. Most of these immigrants are desperate to earn some much-needed money to support themselves and their families. This would in turn, of course, inject more energy into the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, due to the red tape of strict and inhibiting policies, these viable workers are stuck in the middle.
Uprooting yourself and your family from your home country is never an easy thing, and the struggle is exponentially harder when you can’t legally find work in the country you move to. One can only hope that U.S. policymakers will wake up to the fact that this country’s workforce couldn’t rely more heavily on immigrant workers.
