With Florida facing a severe labor shortage in its construction industry, more lenient immigration policy could be part of the solution, reports Clayton Park of The Daytona Beach News-Journal. 

But Florida's recent anti-immigration law poses further challenges, with many construction workers leaving the state. "We are in a situation where if we don't have more immigrants to take jobs, we won't be able to grow," said Ron Hetrick, a senior economist with Lightcast. 

And in the Chicago Sun-Times, Scott Grams, executive director of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association, writes that the Illinois landscaping industry is also in need of more immigrant workers. 

"Expanding the temporary work permits during the labor shortage crisis we have been facing for years would not only allow my industry and others to be able to plan for long-term growth, it also would lessen the underground economy and improve wages and benefits for all workers," Grams notes. 

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Karime Puga, Clara Villatoro, Christian Blair and Ashling Lee. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

SHELTERS BILL — A bill barring the use of public K-12 schools as shelters for migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. was passed by the U.S. House on Wednesday night, reports Ariana Figueroa of the States Newsroom. The bill is a Republican initiative and stems from New York City officials' decision to convert several school gyms to shelter migrants. The bill is likely to die in the Senate; if it doesn’t, President Joe Biden vowed he would veto the bill in a statement Wednesday.  

OVERWHELMING RESPONSE — Canada's new program to attract H-1B visa holders received an overwhelming response, reaching its 10,000-application limit in less than 48 hours, Stuart Anderson writes in Forbes. The high number of applicants is "likely a warning sign to U.S. policymakers that many highly sought foreign-born scientists and engineers ... are dissatisfied with the U.S. immigration system and seeking other options," Anderson writes. Canada may reopen the program if not all applicants are approved, and its fate for 2024 will depend on the success and feedback from the current crop of applicants. 

PREVENTABLE — A new report from an independent federal court monitor states that the death of 8-year-old Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez under U.S. custody in May could have been prevented and rings alarms on the government's system of caring for migrants, reports Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News. Report author Paul Wise offered several suggestions to improve the system, including for "Border Patrol to more closely monitor cases of at-risk migrants, streamline hospital transfer requests, and improve communication among medical staff," Montoya-Galvez notes. 

‘CONSIDER ANOTHER CITY’ — New York City plans to distribute flyers telling migrants arriving from the U.S.-Mexico border to "consider another city" in an attempt to reduce the strain of housing them, writes Ted Hesson for Reuters. Along with highlighting the high cost of living migrants will face, the city plans to limit shelter stays for adult asylum seekers to 60 days. Mayor Eric Adams said the flyers would seek to "combat misinformation" and that the city would help migrants find other housing.  

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

P.S. Coming to bus shelters across the U.S. and Mexico is artist and DACA recipient Felipe Baeza’s "Unruly Forms" art series, featuring mixed-media paintings exploring the displacement of migrants and Mesoamerican antiquities, Jori Finkel writes in The New York Times.