August 7, 2001
Need Employees at Lower Skill Levels? Immigration Breakthrough on the
Horizon
Now is the time to act and make a change for your Company
Greenberg Traurig and the American Hotel and Lodging Association ("AHLA")
are continuing to spearhead a coalition of dozens of multinational companies
and trade associations in an effort to try and amend U.S. immigration laws
to increase the utilization of foreign workers in the U.S. This organization,
the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition ("EWIC"), seeks your help in
an area of importance to service industries nationwide. For more information,
see our website at www.ewic.org. Hotels,
restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals, construction companies and home builders,
alike, have all been adversely affected by the recent tightening of federal
immigration regulations. However, given the existing immigration talks between
Mexican President Fox and President Bush, it appears that we are finally
on the brink of major legislation that will help with both temporary and
more permanent programs for foreign nationals.
The global workforce market should be more readily available to businesses
in order to meet workforce needs. While continuing to pursue vigorous recruiting
methods, including the welfare-to-work and school-to-work programs, these
businesses are beginning to have problems finding applicants for numerous
job openings. Reliance on market forces has proven to be unsuccessful because
there are simply not enough people to meet the demand. Therefore, at least
part of the solution must involve allowing companies to hire foreign workers
to fill the essential worker shortages: when companies can not fill jobs
with U.S. workers, hiring foreign nationals should be a viable alternative.
However, current immigration regulations have greatly curtailed this potential
source of workers and consequently must be changed.
We need your input now in order to push legislation through. We are currently
focusing on three separate areas: (1) repealing the 1986 employer sanction
provisions; (2) devising workable non-immigration visas for lesser skilled
employees; and (3) regularizing the status of a portion of the immigrant
population already in the U.S. workforce. The service industries have been
severely hurt by the inability to find workers to fill lesser skilled positions.
Now is the time to weigh in on this important legislation.
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