Last night in Houston, President Trump said he wants immigrants coming into our country to help fill open jobs, but he wants them coming legally!
“With what we’ve done, we’ve become so successful that we need people to come in…we want great people that love our country, that respect our country, and that want to work,” President Trump said.
Mr. President, you are right! With unemployment at a 50 year low, we need people to come here and work. Our worker visa programs should allow for the timely entry of an adequate number of workers to meet the growing needs of our economy.
Unfortunately, our immigration system has failed to do this for a long time. We now have a labor shortage crisis that is going to hold our economy back if we don’t do something to fix it.
Not only are labor shortages impacting industries like construction and agriculture, they are increasing costs for all Americans. They also serve as a magnet for illegal immigrants who are willing and able to do these jobs but have no legal pathway to get here.
Our broken immigration laws have forced honest employers who follow the law by completing I-9s, to provide workers comp, pay payroll taxes, train, and otherwise invest in illegal immigrants. When these good faith employers are audited by ICE, they find out that some of their workers are not legal. They then have to fire them when they are already short on staff.
Does anyone think those undocumented workers leave the country? Very few actually do! Most of them end up working for competing employers who cheat the system by using 1099s to misclassify them as independent contractors. Then they work them without workers comp, without safety regulations, and they avoid paying payroll taxes.
So our own immigration laws have created a situation that enables unscrupulous employers to undercut and underbid the ethical employers. The dishonest employers are hiring the undocumented immigrants that the good faith employers trained!
When these misclassified workers get injured on a job site, they show up at an emergency room without insurance, and you and I foot the bill!
We need sensible immigration reform that provides for a more practical legal entry of skilled workers, but we also need to legislate a way for the undocumented workers who our companies have already invested in and trained, to earn legal status and be properly identified and taxed.
Please contact your members of Congress today and urge them to work with President Trump to pass sensible immigration legislation that will not only secure our border, but will help meet the growing workforce needs of our booming economy and create a method for undocumented workers who can pass background checks to earn their legal status so we can stop worker misclassification of undocumented immigrants.
God bless you for listening!
May God continue to guide President Trump and keep our economy growing!
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