Business leaders and advocacy groups are banding together to urge for policies that grant work permits to long-term, tax-paying immigrants in the United States, amid widespread labor shortages, reports Billal Rahman of Newsweek.  

Employers in industries like construction, health care and agriculture warn that filling critical roles within their companies is becoming more difficult, Rahman reports.  

"We are calling for a common-sense work permit program that recognizes the essential contributions of long-term, tax-paying, law-abiding immigrant workers—especially those who have become indispensable to our economy and communities," said Massey Villarreal, Co-Chair of Comité de 100, a bipartisan coalition of prominent Mexican American and Latino business leaders. 

Separately, the Trump administration’s efforts to implement a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applicants has ignited a renewed interest in bipartisan efforts to reform the program, reports Hailey Fuchs of Politico.  

In an op-ed for The Boston Globe, Hardvard’s professor Eram Alam writes on how the new H-1B visa fee will threaten an already fragile health care workforce, cutting off the pipeline for much needed foreign-born doctors to come to the United States.   

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