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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.
This week in local welcome:
Thanks for reading, Dan
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