Recent reports state that U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh plans to leave his role in government to work as the executive director of the National Hockey League (NHL) Players’ Association. Walsh came to the secretary role with a strong background in service to unions but has often voiced support for increasing legal pathways for immigrant labor.
“I think we’re going to have a bigger catastrophe if we don’t get more workers into our society, and we do that by immigration,” Walsh even told CNBC.
Yet, while this statement is true, Walsh’s own Department of Labor (DOL) has been one of the biggest impediments to legal immigration. A staggering backlog of cases and a seeming indifference from DOL has left tens of thousands of people attempting to utilize the legal immigration system stranded.
When most think of immigration, they think about the border. But immigration is so much more. Beyond the well-known agencies and departments, such as border patrol agencies, tens of thousands of bureaucrats across the government manage our legal immigration system. One of those agencies is Labor and their ability, or lack thereof, to process paperwork related to legal immigration, has, in turn, fueled many of the issues impacting our country. A non-functioning legal immigration system forces immigrants to try their luck at asylum or enter the country illegally to work. It also leads to fewer legal immigrants working which causes labor shortages for businesses and inflationary pressures affecting all of us.
What role does the Department of Labor play? The DOL is the first gatekeeper for American businesses wanting to employ immigrant labor. As part of the legal immigration system, before employers are allowed to sponsor a foreign worker for employment, they must first offer those jobs to Americans. It’s not simply a rubber stamp process and it takes a significant period of time to document it all. Employers must record who applies and who is hired. If American workers are not pursuing the position, then the Department of Labor works to ensure fair wages are being offered to immigrant workers that will work in that role.
Yet, under Walsh’s leadership, Labor’s immigration component is broken. Just over a year ago, immigrant workers seeking visas for entry-level positions took only 10 months for the total Department of Labor process. That processing time has now exploded to 18-24 months. The backlog for DOL paperwork right now stands at 226,837 in the fourth quarter of 2022, a 114 percent jump from the total backlog in the last quarter of 2020, according to a Cato Institute’s analysis of Labor Department data.
At a time when there are over 10 million job openings in the United States, but only 6 million unemployed workers, such wait times has the potential to cripple our economy. In manufacturing alone, an industry heavily impacted by the labor crisis, current statistics point to a shortage of 8 million people by 2030, with a potential revenue loss of $607 billion. This all places great strain on American businesses that are chronically short-staffed and struggling to keep their doors open.
The next Department of Labor secretary needs to listen to American businesses and immigration experts. That person needs to be more than a union pol, but a thought leader and expert at immigration and understanding the DOL’s role in immigration. There are many common-sense solutions that the Department of Labor can make to improve the legal immigration process under the right leadership. It can change the fee structure to raise additional funds, it can change how it receives documents, or even collaborate more with state workforce agencies to lessen its own backlog. Labor could also prioritize cases of employers providing essential services to the American economy. Biden is expected to nominate Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su.
Back in the 1990s, when Labor initially began its immigration processing, it was designed to be like the IRS’s tax return system where the filings were to be quick, and the government was only to audit bad actors. Instead, Labor reviews all its applications — hundreds of thousands of them — slowly and manually. If we would not tolerate the IRS working this way, we shouldn’t tolerate other government agencies doing so either. In both 2010 and again in 2016, DOL leadership made successful concentrated efforts to reduce its backlogs by creating more streamlined processes. That type of leadership is needed again.
Replacing Walsh with a Labor secretary who not only understands the critical role immigrant labor plays in our economy but also has the background and experience to put that knowledge into practice would be a major win for all. It would be a great service to Americans entitled to responsible leadership, it would serve the border states by alleviating the crisis at the border, and it would provide a much-needed boost to American business owners.
Chris Richardson is a former U.S. diplomat, attorney and co-founder of Argo Visa. He is a leading expert on immigration policy. Richardson served in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Spain as a U.S. diplomat. Richardson resigned in protest due to President Trump’s policy dubbed the “Muslim ban” and the former president’s derogatory statements about African countries. He has advised both Democratic and Republican members of Congress and their staffers in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate on critical immigration and foreign policy issues.