The Forum Daily | Friday, October 20, 2023
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THE FORUM DAILY

** **

Foreign-born workers are keeping the U.S. labor pool afloat. And Florida
has a higher proportion of foreign workers than the country overall,
reports Tom Hudson of WLRN
.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Florida's fastest-growing population by age
has been people older than 65. They need services, and thus more
workers, Hudson notes.

With Baby Boomers retiring, the working-age U.S. population has been
shrinking since the 2007-2009 recession. "If we had the same growth rate
that we had before the Great Recession, the working-age population today
would be about 11% higher than it is today," said Frederico Mandelman,
an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Agriculture is one industry that continues to battle labor shortages. In
Idaho, farmers are urging immigration reforms that would expand
agricultural workers visas under the H-2A program, as Brian Holmes,
Andrew Baertlein and Brenda Rodriguez of KTVB 7

cover in depth.

"We all recognize that the system is broken, and we need to fix it,"
said Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson (R), who joined
in the
reintroduction of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act this year.

Demand for H-2B visas - for temporary, nonagricultural workers -
also remains high, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
already having reached its cutoff for the first half of the 2024 fiscal
year, per the agency's statement

last week.

Here's our regular reminder that Americans support

Republicans and Democrats working together on immigration solutions.

Welcome to Friday's edition of The Forum Daily. I'm Dan Gordon, the
Forum's strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team
also includes Clara Villatoro, Jillian Clark, and Katie Lutz. If you
have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at
[email protected] . 

**WORKER CHALLENGES** - Immigrant workers describe the challenges they
face while making their way in a new country, including widespread
discrimination, in Marisa Gerber's piece in the Los Angeles Times
.
The findings come from a nationwide poll
of more than 3,000
immigrants. Nearly half of respondents reported being paid less, getting
fewer hours, or not getting paid at all in comparison to their U.S.-born
counterparts.

**CLOSING GAPS**- Authorities are filling gaps in barriers along the
Arizona-Mexico border, reports José Ignacio Castañeda Perez of the
Arizona Republic
.
The gap closures are a part of a larger initiative called the Tucson
Border Wall System Project, which spans across 74 miles of border.
Erosion control measures, revegetation of disturbed areas and completion
of safety projects also are part of the effort.

**DANGEROUS NARRATIVES**- Many Republican politicians are tying border
challenges to a range of issues - and for many, those ties are
unsubstantiated, reports Jazmine Ulloa of The New York Times
.
"Historians and political analysts [have] warned that much of the heated
language on immigration plays into far right and sometimes explicitly
racist tropes that fuel fear with the potential for violence," Ulloa
notes. Our take: Weaponizing narratives for political purposes does not
serve America's interests and stands in the way of real solutions that
can unify us.

**HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE** - The State Department is encouraging
Afghanistan's neighbors to accept refugees, report Simon Lewis and
Kanishka Singh of Reuters
.
Pakistan has said it may deport immigrants it has not authorized,
including hundreds of thousands of Afghans, starting Nov. 1. About
20,000 of them, possibly more, are waiting for the U.S. to process
applications to resettle here.

This week in local welcome:

* Faith and nonprofit groups in Wisconsin are holding listening sessions
to brainstorm on ways to best serve refugees in their communities. (Isak
Dinesen, WAOW 9 News
)

* Volunteer Anna Neumann of Roy, Utah, shares her family's mentorship
of a newly arrived Afghan family and urges action on the Afghan
Adjustment Act. (Standard-Examiner
) 

* In Ohio, a Ukrainian child refugees' choir will perform in a benefit
concert to support the Frontline Medical Ukraine Fund. (Peter Gill, The
Columbus Dispatch
)

 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan  

  

 

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