Federal immigration laws need to be revised to prevent Arkansas jobs from going unfilled, according to several business leaders who began a statewide tour Wednesday as part of a national effort to get Congress to act.
Using agriculture as an example, Beau Bishop, director of national affairs for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said farm jobs are going unfilled - and, in some states, crops are going unharvested - because of a worker shortage.
“The dairy and the specialty-crop industry are most affected by immigrant labor in Arkansas,” Bishop said. “While these two industries require vastly different workforces, they both depend heavily upon immigrant workers.”
Bishop noted that while consumer demand for vegetables and produce is up 9 percent nationally since 2000, U.S. production has shrunk by 4 percent. That, he said, means suppliers are increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables they import, which he said costs jobs and affects the ability to ensure food safety.
Bishop was one of five business leaders who spoke to reporters about the need for Congress to act on immigration issues.
The group referred to a study released earlier this week by the Partnership for a New American Economy about how labor shortages are increasing the nation’s reliance on imported produce.
The partnership’s members include national and state political and business leaders who are trying to make an economic case to streamline and modernize the U.S. immigration system, according to its website. Its wants to see immigration policy that secures the nation’s border, creates a simple employment verification system, eases the process for seasonal workers and creates a method for illegal aliens to gain legal status.
The partnership plans to feature different industries at its stops over the next month. Tentative topics include poultry in Springdale, manufacturing in Fort Smith, lumber in Texarkana, timber and paper in Pine Bluff, and specialty crops in Jonesboro.
Jay Chessir, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, said immigration issues affect all sectors of the economy.
“We in the business community have been looking for sensible reforms from Congress for quite some time,” Chessir said
Grant Tennille, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, said agriculture is just one area in the state suffering from a labor shortage. He said the state doesn’t have enough people with engineering degrees at a time when it is pushing science, technology, engineering and mathematics in schools.
“If we want to keep pace with what we know industry needs, then we need to find these folks from somewhere else,” Tennille said.
Randy Zook, president and CEO of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, said there are thousands of jobs going unfilled, not just agricultural jobs, because companies can’t find people with the skills they need who live where the businesses are located.
Referring to limits on the H-1B Visa program, which allows U.S. companies to temporarily hire skilled foreign workers for specific jobs, Zook said companies are finding themselves unable to find the engineers, chemists, nurses and other workers they need.
If the rules that limit such visas aren’t changed, “then the U.S. and Arkansas will continue to be at a disadvantage with the countries we are competing with.”
Victor Valtierra, consul for protection and legal affairs for the Mexican Consulate in Little Rock, observed Wednesday’s news conference.
Afterward, Valtierra said an immigration-policy overhaul would help ensure that migrant workers have adequate protections for both pay and job safety. And, given the number of people living in the United States illegally, a path to legal status would ensure that family unity is protected from deportation.
Asked about the concern voiced by some that U.S. workers could lose jobs if immigration laws are eased, Tennille said adding workers is just the first step toward expanding industries.
On Monday, the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services said the state had a 7.3 percent unemployment rate in January, compared with a 6.6 percent rate nationally.
“We’ve got to stop thinking of this as a zero-sum game,” Tennille said. As an example, both he and Bishop said farm jobs are hard work and often seasonal. As Arkansas diversifies its specialty crops into areas such as edamame and peanuts, it will have the opportunity to add production facilities that will require a new set of skilled workers, Tennille said.
And the state’s population is aging, Tennille said. That will reduce the workforce as more people retire. At the same time, places where agricultural jobs are available are losing population as young people move to urban centers for better-paying work.
Even then, Bishop pointed out that farmers prefer to hire locally whenever possible.
“The process you have to go through to bring in migrant workers is extremely difficult,” he said. But farmers are willing to go through a “very tedious” process involving pay, housing and other services in order to get their crops in.
Business, Pages 27 on 03/20/2014