Close Border But Open More Work Visas To Migrants?

One irony of the open border crisis is that the nation is now experiencing a shortage of legal immigrants needed to man seasonal farming & manufacturing jobs, so says the WSJ, as “fewer H-2B visas coincided with fewer jobs for Americans,” more Americans drop out of the workforce, &/or are happy to live off govt subsidies.

Says the editorial board: “Businesses are getting whipsawed by the Biden Administration regulatory juggernaut, but here’s a rule-making they can cheer: The Dept of Homeland Security is exercising its discretionary authority to issue 20,000 more H-2B visas for seasonal workers in the coming months.” The controlling law currently caps H-2B or temporary work visas at 66,000 each year, but DHS can issue additional visas if it and the Labor Dept determine employers can’t fill seasonal positions with “willing, qualified American workers.”

As it happens, the editors say, such a shortage is being fueled by a variety of reasons, some noted above, and it’s helping to drive up the consumer costs (aka inflation) and exacerbate supply shortages we’ve been reading about. “Meantime, hundreds of thousands of able-bodied foreign migrants hungry for jobs are flooding the southern border” and crossing without authorization. Yet again, “rather than compromise to fix the nation’s dual immigrant crises – too many illegal migrants and not enough legal foreign workers – Congress keeps punting to the executive branch. It doesn’t want to do tough jobs either.”

Davd Soul