[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
IMMIGRATION AND THE SMALL BUSINESS WORKFORCE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MAY 22, 2019
__________
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Small Business Committee Document Number 116-023
Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman
ABBY FINKENAUER, Iowa
JARED GOLDEN, Maine
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
JASON CROW, Colorado
SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
JUDY CHU, California
MARC VEASEY, Texas
DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Ranking Member
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, American Samoa, Vice Ranking Member
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
KEVIN HERN, Oklahoma
JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
ROSS SPANO, Florida
JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
Adam Minehardt, Majority Staff Director
Melissa Jung, Majority Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Kevin Fitzpatrick, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Nydia Velazquez............................................. 1
Hon. Troy Balderson.............................................. 2
Hon. Steve Chabot................................................ 4
WITNESSES
Mr. Dan Wallace, Director of Special Projects, New American
Economy, New York, NY.......................................... 5
Mr. Derek Shoare, Senior Vice President, Challenger Sports,
Lenexa, KS..................................................... 7
Mr. Nick Sabino, President, Deer Park Roofing, Inc., Cincinnati,
OH............................................................. 8
Mr. Daniel Griswold, Senior Research Fellow, Co-Director, Trade
and Immigration Project, Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, Arlington, VA...................................... 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Mr. Dan Wallace, Director of Special Projects, New American
Economy, New York, NY...................................... 33
Mr. Derek Shoare, Senior Vice President, Challenger Sports,
Lenexa, KS................................................. 37
Mr. Nick Sabino, President, Deer Park Roofing, Inc.,
Cincinnati, OH............................................. 40
Mr. Daniel Griswold, Senior Research Fellow, Co-Director,
Trade and Immigration Project, Mercatus Center at George
Mason University, Arlington, VA............................ 45
Questions for the Record:
None.
Answers for the Record:
None.
Additional Material for the Record:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Council.............. 50
IMMIGRATION AND THE SMALL BUSINESS WORKFORCE
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2019
House of Representatives,
Committee on Small Business,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:32 a.m., in Room
2360, Rayburn House Office Building. Hon. Nydia Velazquez
[chairwoman of the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Velazquez, Finkenauer, Kim, Crow,
Davids, Chu, Veasey, Evans, Schneider, Espaillat, Delgado,
Houlahan, Craig, Chabot, Balderson, Hern, Hagedorn, Stauber,
Burchett, and Spano.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Good morning, everyone. The committee
will come to order. We are just waiting for the Ranking Member
who has an amendment on Judiciary, and as soon as he finishes
with that amendment he will be joining us.
I thank everyone for joining us this morning, and I want to
especially thank the witnesses for being here today.
Today's hearing on immigration and the small business
workforce is a reminder that the immigrant story is the
American story, and it is a story that has fueled
entrepreneurship in this country for centuries. Without the
arrival of countless waves of immigrants throughout American
history, our economy would not be nearly as dynamic or as
advanced as it is today. This is because entrepreneurs have
come to our shores and our borders from around the globe, all
with the conviction that America is a land of opportunity, a
place where if you work hard you can build a better life, not
just for yourself but for your children, your family, and your
community.
Today, when we sit here as members of this committee, we
cannot forget that immigration and entrepreneurship have long
stood together as pillars of the American dream. So when we
consider proposals to reform our broken immigration system, let
us not overlook the unique challenges facing our labor market,
and ultimately, the families who dream of working hard to build
a better life in this country.
For small businesses, finding and retaining qualified and
skilled workers often presents its own set of challenges, and
we see this across many different sectors of the economy, such
as agriculture, construction, and health care. Without a large
human resources department, small firms are put at a
disadvantage in the task of finding qualified workers. And
whether we talk about the highly-skilled labor market or
planning for temporary seasonal labor for the summer, small
employers are seeing firsthand the challenges of our evolving
workforce. Often, there just aren't enough domestic workers to
meet the needs of small companies, and therefore, are forced to
rely on foreign-born workers to fill permanent and temporary
jobs no matter the skill level.
Small firms who are intimately tied to their local
economies simply cannot find the workers with the technical
expertise to meet their needs. Ultimately, when small firms
cannot hire the workers they need, small businesses cannot
reach their full potential, and neither can our economy.
Clearly, the system can, and should, be working better.
These are all the reasons why we need comprehensive
immigration reform. For one, small businesses need certainty to
thrive. Unfortunately, our immigration system does not provide
the certainty and confidence our small business owners deserve.
Take the unprecedented backlog at United States Citizenship
Immigration Services. Last fall, the backlog exceeded 2.3
million cases with average processing times for petitions
nearly three times higher in 2018 than in 2014. That is 2.3
immigration cases ranging from pending green cards to work
visas that sat unprocessed.
But these are not simply cases. These are people. People
who bring fresh ideas and energy. People that are ready,
willing, and able to come here, work hard, and contribute to
our economy. And our economy and small business sector
community are desperate for these workers. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics projects an additional 11.5 million new jobs will be
created by 2026 with new opportunities in health care leading
the way. Yet, during that same timeframe, we will only add 7.9
million new domestic employees to the workforce. That is 4
million new job openings we cannot fill.
This should not be hard. If we cannot come together to
address this issue through comprehensive and common sense
immigration reform, our small businesses and economy will
suffer. For years now, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle
have struggled to turn comprehensive immigration reform into a
reality. But the hard truth is that inaction is only
exacerbating labor shortages on our family farms. Inaction is
only deepening the lack of workers in key sectors for small
firms including construction and housing. And inaction is
deterring talented entrepreneurs with the idea that could even
one day become the next Google.
But this does not have to be the case. We are here today to
discuss steps to change the reality facing too many immigrant
workers and the small employers who rely on them. It is my hope
that today's discussion can help identify not only issues of
concern but serious solutions for small businesses.
With that, I thank each of the witnesses for joining us
today, and I look forward to your testimony.
I would now like to yield to the----
Mr. BALDERSON. Substitute Ranking Member.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Correct. Mr. Balderson, for an
opening statement.
Mr. BALDERSON. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for
the witnesses being here. I will be reading you the opening
statement from my colleague, Ranking Member Chabot, who is
stuck doing an amendment, I believe, in his Committee.
So thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding this hearing
today.
When we speak to small business owners, both here in D.C.,
and at home in our districts, we hear a similar message. The
workforce shortage we are currently experiencing is having a
negative impact on small businesses across the country and
across industries.
According to a study conducted by the NFIB, 86 percent of
employers with job openings reported finding few or no
qualified applicants for the positions they were seeking.
Without access to local qualified employees, employers are
looking to temporary foreign workers to fill the workforce
gaps.
I will add one statement from myself to go off Ranking
Member Chabot's statement here, is that he and I were walking
down the street this morning and talked about the unemployment
rate of the State of Ohio is now at 3.3, and how hard it is
right now to find workers who are unemployed. So that is a good
issue to have but it is also a negative for not having
employees. So I was going to say in my statement, Ranking
Member Chabot and I, had that discussion walking down the
street this morning.
For example, employers in STEM fields in need to highly-
skilled workers in specialty occupations often petition for H-
1B visas of the 40,000 companies that submitted H-1B visa
applications in fiscal year 2016, the top 20 sponsors accounted
for 37 percent of all visa approvals.
Given this trend, how can small businesses manage to secure
visas when they have to compete against industry giants and
Fortune 500 companies? This also affects employers in seasonal
labor-intensive industries who rely on H-2B visas to ensure
that they have the workforce needed to meet their industry's
seasonal demands. H-2B employers are often bogged down in the
bureaucratic red tape and struggle to comply with conflicting
guidance from DOL and DHS.
In the 114th and 115th Congress, I introduced the
Strengthen Employment and Seasonal Opportunities Now, otherwise
known as the SEASON Act, to provide greater marketplace
certainty and to make it easier for employers to meet the
demands of their respective industries and our growing economy.
I am confident that reforms to streamline and simplify
temporary employment visa programs can alleviate some of the
strains caused by the workforce shortages.
Today, we will hear about the economic impact of temporary
foreign workers on small businesses and the U.S. economy. As we
discuss these issues, I will be focused on one question: are
these visa programs a viable option for resource-strapped small
businesses?
Thank you to our witnesses for participating today. I yield
back, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman yields back.
If committee members have an opening statement, we will ask
that they be submitted for the record.
I would like to take a minute to explain the timing rules.
Each witness gets 5 minutes to testify and the members get 5
minutes for questioning. There is a lighting system to assist
you. The green light will be on when you begin, and the yellow
light comes on when you have 1 minute remaining. The red light
comes on when you are out of time, and we ask that you stay
within the timeframe to the best of your ability.
I would now like to introduce our witnesses.
Our first witness is Mr. Dan Wallace. Mr. Wallace is the
Director of Special Projects at New American Economy, a
bipartisan coalition that advocates for smart federal, state,
and local immigration policies that will create jobs for all
Americans. Prior to joining New American Economy, he served as
a Policy Advisor on Immigration in the New York City Mayor's
office. Mr. Wallace holds a master of education in community
development and a bachelor of arts in political science from
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome, sir.
I would like now to yield to Ms. Sharice Davids from
Kansas, to introduce our second witness.
Ms. DAVIDS. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Our second witness today is Mr. Derek Shoare. Mr. Shoare is
a native of Wolverhampton, England, and graduated from St.
Mary's College in London with a bachelor's degree in physical
education. He spent 7 years teaching secondary students in and
around London before immigrating with his wife and 1-year-old
daughter to the United States in 1987. They began their lives
in the U.S. and Connecticut, working for what at the time was
the largest soccer educational company in the country where
Derek was the head of sales and recruitment. Ten years later,
Mr. Shoare and his family, which had grown at that time to
include a son, relocated to the Kansas City area, which I was
excited about, to start Challenger Sports with a mission to
spread the love of the game of soccer to the U.S. and put
smiles on children's faces. He spent the last 22 years growing
the company from a few camps in the Midwest to a total soccer
company, providing day and overnight camps, seasonal training
programs, tournament management, oversee soccer tours, coach
education, and uniforms and equipment. Mr. Shoare has also been
involved in coaching soccer since his stint at St. Mary's where
he was both the team captain and the coach, leading his team to
two consecutive national finals. Congratulations. Mr. Shoare
has 28 years of experience dealing with immigration and work
visas for his previous employer and now for Challenger Sports.
He is one of the key people involved with the H-2B program at
Challenger Sports since the company began using the visas in
2002. He and his wife Linda officially became U.S. citizens in
June of 2013.
Thank you for being here, Mr. Shoare.
I yield black.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Ms. Davids.
And now I recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Chabot, to
introduce the last two witnesses.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I would first like to introduce Nick Sabino, who is the
president and founder of Deer Park Roofing, Inc., which
provides residential and commercial roofing services. Deer Park
Roofing has offices in both Cincinnati, Ohio, and Florence,
Kentucky. Nick currently serves as Chairman of the Board-Elect
of the National Roof Contractors' Association and is slated to
serve as NRCA Chairman of the Board in 2019 and 2020. He earned
a bachelor's of science degree in mathematics from Xavier
University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we welcome you here today.
And I would also like to introduce Mr. Daniel Griswold. He
is a nationally recognized and highly public expert on trade
and immigration policy. Mr. Griswold is a senior research
fellow at the--is it Mercatus? Mercatus Center at George Mason
University and co-director of its Trade and Immigration
Project. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a masters in the
politics of world economy from the London School of Economics
and Political Science. So we welcome you here as well.
And I want to apologize for being a little bit late. I had
an amendment over in Judiciary and it was my amendment so I
could not leave in the middle of it. So I apologize to
everybody.
And thank you, Mr. Balderson, for filling in for me there.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chabot.
And now, Mr. Wallace, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF DAN WALLACE, DIRECTOR OF SPECIAL PROJECTS, NEW
AMERICAN ECONOMY; DEREK SHOARE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT,
CHALLENGER SPORTS; NICK SABINO, PRESIDENT, DEER PARK ROOFING,
INC., DANIEL GRISWOLD, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, CO-DIRECTOR,
TRADE AND IMMIGRATION PROJECT, MERCATUS CENTER AT GEORGE MASON
UNIVERSITY
STATEMENTS OF DAN WALLACE
Mr. WALLACE. Thank you, Chairwoman Velazquez, Ranking
Member Chabot, and members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today and provide testimony on
behalf of New American Economy (NAE). NAE is a bipartisan
coalition of more than 500 mayors and business leaders from all
50 states and every sector of the economy united in
demonstrating the importance of immigration to America's
economic growth and advocating for smart Federal, state, and
local policies that will create jobs for all Americans.
In our capacity as a research organization, NAE analyzes
data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and other
publicly-available data sources to understand national economic
and workforce challenges and opportunities, as well as the role
of immigrants in industries and occupations across the country.
As this body of research continues to grow, one thing remains
abundantly clear: immigration is one of America's greatest
competitive advantages, helping to keep our workforce younger
and more adaptive to the changing needs of U.S. businesses in
the 21st century economy.
Immigrants not only help fill shortages in the labor
market, they also create jobs for Americans at every skill
level. Although they represent just 13.7 percent of the U.S.
population, immigrants account for more than 20 percent of all
entrepreneurs. And they start more than one-quarter of all
businesses in seven of the eight highest growth sectors,
including construction, transportation, and utilities, and
health care.
From Silicon Valley to Main Street, immigrant business
owners are creating jobs and adding value to our economy.
Between 2006 and 2012, 43.9 percent of high-tech Silicon Valley
firms were founded by immigrants. Immigrants also start 28
percent of Main Street businesses like restaurants, grocery
stores, and retail shops that make local communities more
vibrant.
Immigrants also play an indispensable role in the American
workforce for large and small businesses alike, and as the U.S.
economy continues to grow, employers are beginning to sound the
alarm. In many industries, there are not enough workers to get
the job done.
In 2018, nearly half of U.S. employers reported that they
were struggling to find enough workers, up from 14 percent at
the height of the recession in 2010. Among many reasons, the
primary challenge for the employers surveyed was simply a lack
of applicants. This is true across a variety of key sectors.
Between 2002 and 2014, the number of field and crop workers
in America declined by 146,000, causing major labor shortages
on U.S. farms. A rapidly aging U.S. population is also
straining our healthcare workforce. 62.8 percent of home health
aide administrators cited `` caregiver shortages'' as one of
the top three threats facing their business in 2015. There are
structural reasons for this. As more young people are going on
to college, the size of the U.S.-born population with a high
school degree or less has decreased. Among workers ages 25-44,
there was a decline of 12.3 million people with less than a
high school degree between 1990 and 2010, but the number of
jobs for workers with that education level held steady. Thus,
real and persistent gaps in the American workforce have opened
up. There will be an estimated shortage of 3.6 million workers
in labor-intensive occupations by 2024.
Immigration is not a silver bullet that can fix all of
these challenges, but it should be part of the solution. First,
the foreign-born are more likely than the U.S.-born to fall
within the prime working-age range.
Second, immigrants' education and skill levels are
complementary to the U.S.-born. They are more likely to hold
graduate degrees, but also more likely to have less than a high
school degree, allowing them to help fill jobs in labor-
intensive and service industries, like the tourism and
hospitality sector, in which 84 percent of all jobs require
less than a college degree. In construction, foreign-born
workers frequently take on the most physically demanding roles,
while U.S.-born workers prefer positions that require more
English-language skills or experience in management or customer
service. Finally, immigrants are also more likely to work
unusual hours and be willing to relocate for jobs than the
U.S.-born.
Especially in industries like tourism and hospitality that
rely heavily on seasonal labor, immigration is a lifeline that
supports small businesses and the American workers they employ.
In fact, one-third of businesses in this sector report that
they would be forced to reduce their operations or close
altogether if they could not hire workers through temporary
visa programs.
Threats to programs that provide opportunities for
immigrants with work authorization to remain in the U.S., such
as DACA and TPS, will only exacerbate current labor shortages
and make it even more difficult for small businesses to grow.
Legislation introduced in this Congress would protect DACA and
TPS-holders and give American business owners more certainty
about their employees' futures. The bipartisan Fairness for
High School Immigrants Act would eliminate arbitrary country
caps that cause lengthy backlogs in the employment-based
immigration system.
Expanding avenues for immigrants with education and skills
backgrounds that complement American workers would help ease
the acute shortages felt in a variety of sectors. Such reforms
should be part of a comprehensive overhaul of America's
outdated immigration system. We must ensure that our laws
reflect the needs of our economy and keep with our tradition as
a Nation that welcomes hard-working immigrants from around the
world. Thank you.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Wallace.
Mr. Shoare, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DEREK SHOARE
Mr. SHOARE. Dear Chairwoman Velazquez, Ranking Member
Chabot and members of the Committee, thanks for allowing me to
speak to you today about Challenger Sports, which I helped
found 22 years ago.
We are based in Lenexa, Kansas, in Congresswoman Davids
district, and we are a multifaceted sports company. Our mission
is simply to put smiles on kids' faces through all of the
services we try and provide. Today, my focus is on our spring
programs and the fall programs where we use the H-2B program.
We have been using this program for 15 years. We have grown it
due to the needs of the clients we serve to approximately $10
million. This year, we are needing 300 workers across 27
locations across the country. This training program is the most
important service we provide to our clients. They run their
programs, they set them up, and then we provide them coaches to
deliver the mission that they provide. Unfortunately, when we
cannot provide the most important service to them, they now
turn around to us and say we are not running your tournaments,
we are not running your camps, we are not buying your apparel,
and we will not be going on your tours. A pretty devastating
effect.
We employ 160 full-time workers. In the last year and a
half, we reduced our full-time workforce by over 10 percent.
You may say recruit U.S. coaches. That will solve your problem.
We go way above and beyond what the DOL asks. We advertise in
all the cities that we are looking for on platforms like
Indeed.com. We deal with the largest soccer membership in the
country, over 18,000 coaches, and due to our relationship, we
send emails to every single member of that group to ask, come
and work for Challenger Sports.
We pay significantly above what the prevailing wage is
advertised by the DOL. We just cannot find U.S. workers. We
believe it is due to the unemployment presently now, but also,
these positions are multifaceted and often it is a split day.
They work in the morning. Then they will work in the evening.
And they do weekend work as well. Maybe not very attractive.
So we go to the H-2B program. This year, we ran 27
locations. Before April 1st start date, we got approved 8 of
our 12. We then went ahead, called all the clients in the other
four areas and told them we will not be delivering your coaches
in approximately 6 weeks' time. The remaining 15 locations were
after April 1 start dates. We received approval on five of
those 15 on May 15. We received 45 percent of the required
need.
When we apply for those April 1st visas, we applied at
12:01 January 1st. Unfortunately, the DOL website crashed. We
applied exactly at the same time as every other company, and
there were 95,000 visa applications for 33,000 visas.
The reputation of our company after being a leader in the
industry is becoming extremely tarnished. The clients do not
trust us. The workers we offer work do not trust us anymore.
And this year we estimate there will be 80,000 youngsters not
being coached by us.
Congress needs to act now. We cannot go forward promising
our clients and our workers something we cannot guarantee. It
is embarrassing. It is unprofessional.
With the economy rebound and more need for seasonal
workers, the current regulations do not allow companies like us
to fulfill our need.
Congress must act now to raise the cap to a level that
helps businesses like ours plan and fulfill the needs of the
youth of today. If this does not occur, we have a strategic
meeting in 4 weeks. We certainly do not expect an answer in 4
weeks but we are already looking at downsizing significantly
the company that we have grown.
I appreciate your time and appreciate your consideration.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Shoare.
Mr. Sabino, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF NICK SABINO
Mr. SABINO. Madam Chair Velazquez, Ranking Member Chabot
and members of the Committee, my name is Nick Sabino and I am
president of Deer Park Roofing in Cincinnati, Ohio. I now serve
as Chairman of the Board-Elect of the National Roofing
Contractors Association and am testifying on behalf of NRCA
today. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to discuss the need
for immigration reform that meets the workforce needs of small
businesses and the consumers we serve.
Deer Park Roofing was founded in 1996, and we currently
employ 125 professionals. Our goal is to grow our business and
meet the needs of our customers, but the biggest obstacle to
growth is the inability to find qualified applicants.
We currently recruited several new employees through our
career and technical outreach program, but still need 10 to 15
more to keep up with our record backlog of work. We have worked
hard to develop innovative solutions to the challenges of
recruiting new employees. We created an employee development
program, which focuses on skills assessments, mentoring,
promotion from within, and providing career paths for all
associates. We now work with three technical schools, three
high schools, and seven recruiting partners.
Chronic and widespread shortages of qualified workers are
the most significant limitation that my company and other
roofing contractors face to grow our businesses.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job openings
in construction increased to 360,000 in March, the highest
level ever recorded. NRCA estimates workforce shortages cause
an estimated $7.5 to $15 billion in annual lost economic
activity. This problem will become even more severe in the
future due to an aging workforce and other demographic trends.
The large number of job openings that we are face has a
negative impact on production and wages across our supply
chain. Manufacturing and distribution were basically flat in
2018, primarily due to the lack of workforce. We are being
forced to turn down work, which is causing slowdowns in both
residential and commercial construction.
To address this situation, NRCA is pursuing a two-track
strategy. First, expanding and improving career and technical
educational opportunities, and second, supporting immigration
reform that meets workforce needs.
Regarding the first strategy, NRCA has developed
ProCertification, a comprehensive program that aims to promote
professionalism and expand career paths for new and existing
workers. We believe the success of ProCertification will help
attract more Americans to a career in roofing.
But no matter how successful this effort is, we know it
will not be enough to fully address our workforce needs given
the demographics our country faces. This is why NRCA supports
immigration reform that addresses the workforce needs of small
businesses like Deer Park Roofing.
I will outline a few steps Congress can make to meet this
goal.
NRCA supports the workforce for the Expanding Economy Act,
H.R. 1740, legislation designed to meet workforce needs in
roofing and other industries that require critical skilled
workers. It would establish a two-track system that matches
willing employers with willing temporary workers and provide
more visas in times of economic strength and less during
downturns. It will ensure employers undertake vigorous
recruitment to hire U.S. workers first, while also enabling job
creators to obtain the workers needed to meet consumer demands
and grow their businesses. NRCA believes H.R. 1740 is vital to
the future workforce needs of the roofing industry and urges
members to co-sponsor this innovative legislation. NRCA also
urges Congress to provide a permanent solution for employees
now working under temporary protected status and individuals
who came to the U.S. as minor children and are now
undocumented, many of whom are in the DACA program.
I especially want to thank Chair Velazquez for her
leadership to address the TPS issue through the Dream and
Promise Act (H.R. 6). My written statement contains more
details on why the need for TPS reform is important to the
roofing industry and many hardworking individuals.
To conclude, workforce shortages are the single biggest
challenge facing the roofing industry today. NRCA urges
lawmakers to work on a bipartisan basis in support of reforms
to our immigration system that address both the workforce and
security needs of the American people.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Sabino.
Mr. Griswold, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL GRISWOLD
Mr. GRISWOLD. Thank you, Chairwoman Velazquez, Ranking
Member Chabot, and members of the Committee. Thank you for
holding this hearing today on the very urgent need to reform
the U.S. visa system to meet our needs in the 21st century.
High-skilled immigration is a fundamental driver of wealth
and job creation in the United States. The H-1B visa has been
an integral part of a U.S. immigration system that for all its
shortcomings has been the on ramp for immigrants to become
permanent contributors to American society.
H-1B immigrants are more likely than native-born workers to
file for patentable technologies. Immigrants constitute 18
percent of the adult workforce and yet they account for 28
percent of the high-quality patents that are filed each year--
patents that raise the productivity and wages of native-born
Americans.
Attracting skilled foreign-born workers is especially
important for America's healthcare industry. One in four
doctors in America today is foreign-born. That ratio is higher
in rural areas. With baby boomers like me retiring in large
numbers, our Nation is going to need something like 90,000 new
doctors between now and 2025. Without adequate doctors and
nurses, Americans are going to face longer waiting lines and
inferior service for health care.
And yet, our H-1B visa system, only 4 percent of the visas
go to workers in the medicine and health field.
Immigration is an important issue for small business, as we
have just heard this morning. Small business owners face the
same challenges as employers in all your districts in finding
workers under these tight labor conditions. Immigrants play a
key role in meeting the workforce needs in such important small
business sectors as hotels and restaurants, construction,
landscaping, retail and services, not to mention family farms.
Yet small enterprises typically lack the expertise they need to
navigate the complexities of the immigration system.
The immigration system has become noticeably more
restrictive in recent years. Approval rates for H-1B visas
awarded in the lottery have dropped significantly and as a
result, applications for H-1B visas have been trending
downward. Meanwhile, the existing cap of 65,000 regular H-1B
visas is the same as it was in 1990 when Congress established
the program. The number of employment-based green cards has
been frozen since 1990 as well at 140,000. That is despite the
growth of the U.S. labor force, and the rising growth of the
information technology economy.
Since 1990, our economy has added 38 million additional new
jobs. The number of jobs in professional, scientific, and
technical services has more than doubled since then to 9.4
million. The number of jobs in the healthcare field--hospitals,
ambulatory care--has almost doubled to 12.9 million since 1990.
Yet, the number of H-1B visas and employment-based green cards
is still frozen where it was when Congress set it in 1990.
Let me suggest three important reforms today. One, the H-1B
cap should be raised to meet the demands of the U.S. labor
market. The number of regular H-1B visas should, at a minimum,
be doubled to 130,000. That would meet the growth in the labor
force of those sectors that are most in need of high-skilled
labor. A tripling of the number of visas would be even better,
to 195,000. That would meet the amount of revealed demand each
year. You would avoid the lottery allotment where small
business often comes out on the short end of getting those
visas. A higher cap should contain an annual escalator tied to
the growth of the high-skilled labor force. And the cap should
be repealed all together for the healthcare sector as it is in
the university and nonprofit sector already.
Two, the number of employment-based green cards should be
increased. The cap of 140,00 should be at least doubled to
reflect the growth of the labor force that is most in need of
high-skilled workers. On top of that, the spouses and minor
children of the primary green card worker should be exempt from
the cap.
And finally, the per-country quotas on employment-based
green cards should be repealed. The quotas discriminate against
immigrants based solely on their place of birth. They deny
legal permanent resident status to well-qualified candidates
who have already proven their value to their employers, the
U.S. economy, and society.
In closing, America is competing for the best talent in the
world. And without reforms, we are increasingly in danger of
losing that competition. Thank you.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Griswold.
And now I recognize myself for 5 minutes.
Let me take this opportunity to thank all of you for being
here and for making sure that when we debate immigration, that
people see more than just the border issue and look at this in
terms of an economic issue, and that is exactly what we are
doing here today.
Mr. Wallace, it is often said that low-skilled immigrants
put downward pressure on wages, thereby hurting American
workers. However, according to the latest figures, we see that
these low-skilled workers are in higher demand than ever, and
in some cases driving up wages. Is there space in the economy
to both bring in low-skilled workers and raise wages for blue
collar Americans to fill these open positions?
Mr. WALLACE. Yes, I believe there is. And I have seen
additional research showing that looking in metropolitan areas,
when the share of less educated immigrants in a metropolitan
area raises by 10 percent, there is a growth in the number of
new businesses established in those areas of more than 2
percent, including more than 2 percent for small business
establishments. So actually, growth in this population spurs
growth in the business sector, which ultimately creates jobs
for more Americans. There is also, I think, an understanding
that businesses that are not able to find workers to fill
certain roles may be left with the only choice to them is to
take their businesses offshore. And so certainly having access
to a workforce, whether that includes U.S.-born or immigrants,
would allow those companies to remain in the U.S. and to employ
more Americans here.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you.
Mr. Sabino, the roofing industry is one of the hardest
industries to work in and has an ongoing shortage of workers
which you discuss. You mentioned the challenges the industry is
having finding younger workers to join the industry. Without
the use of a temporary visa program, would your company or
industry be able to meet its workforce needs?
Mr. SABINO. No, we would not. And I would say that we have
a comprehensive career and technical education outreach. And
when we are in these schools, we have three full-time employees
dedicated to these types of outreach programs. We have a
training manager who on-boards employees. Roofing industry
safety is of critical importance. So somebody cannot just get
on a roof on day one. They have to go through training. We have
to teach them manufacturers' details. We have an administrator,
we have an H.R. director. So a staff of three with all these
recruiting partners. We have partnered with construction
management schools. But when we are in the career and technical
education section and there are 40 students in there, 20 of
these students are going to join the trades.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. So let me ask----
Mr. SABINO. Sorry.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. I am sorry. Please finish.
Mr. SABINO. I am getting to my point here. We might get a
piece of that pie that is 10 percent of those individuals. So
we are going to get two out of that recruiting partner. One of
those employees is going to be with us after 90 days. We need
10 to 15 people. When we did our budget this year, we
understand how many people we need. We are doing everything we
can, and there is a positive return on investment there, but we
cannot get to that number without----
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Has the industry tried raising wages
or increasing the benefits you provide to attract younger
workers?
Mr. SABINO. Absolutely. Absolutely. Our wages have gone up
significantly over the last 3 or 4 years, 40 percent, 50
percent. The wage range for a roofing installer is anywhere
from $16 to $35 an hour. I think that that is probably as much
as one of your staffers is getting paid or more, but we do not
see a wave of staffers coming to join the roofing industry.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you.
Mr. Shoare, can you please speak to the uncertainty that
the current employment-based visa creates when annual caps are
reached or when there are backlogs at the agency, for example?
Mr. SHOARE. Hopefully, I stressed the frustration. We are
very fortunate we have a great person working for our company
that every morning will get up and she will look at the
announcement from DHS on where they are in the cap. Thus, just
waiting for that morning to know that this year 10 of our
applications did not get through. Obviously, this just is
really very poor for the morale of the whole company because
our regional salespeople out in the field, they are the people
who have to get on the telephones and tell these clubs when
they have got 1,000 youngsters all set up for their program
they are not going to get any professional coaches. Oh, and by
the way, we will still be running our camp in the summer where
we get 100 youngsters.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you.
Mr. SHOARE. So it is just very, very difficult.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Shoare.
My time has expired, and if there is a second round, Mr.
Griswold, I have questions for you.
The gentleman from Ohio, Ranking Member Mr. Chabot is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And since we did not get to Griswold, I will go there first
and go down this way with a question I would like to ask
everybody.
I have been a supporter, the principal supporter on the
Republican side on the H-2B program over the years and also in
support of H-1Bs. And considering an increase, et cetera.
I have gotten some criticism from folks who will argue a
couple things. One thing, that if we just paid folks more, you
know, we have a little under 4 percent which is a lot better
than it usually is, 4 percent unemployment, so we have been
heading in the right direction, but there is still almost 4
percent of the people that are not employed. So their argument
will go why I should not be supportive of programs like this is
because (a) all you have to do is pay people more, pay
Americans more and they will take the work or they get the
training, et cetera. And (b) they will say that our, for lack
of a better term, our safety net is too generous. We allow
people to get unemployment too long or we allow housing,
whether it is section 8 housing or others or food stamps or
health care. We have a lot of things that we will give people
who are not working and so they will take advantage of those
things and therefore not work. I am not saying that this is the
case. I am saying that these are arguments that were used
against those of us that have supported these types of
programs.
So what would your response to those things be? Mr.
Griswold, I will start with you there.
Mr. GRISWOLD. And Congressman, thanks for those questions
and for your support over the years for good immigration
reform.
Well, first off, wages have been going up. But there is a
limit. If wages go up too high, the business is not profitable
and investment goes elsewhere. In some businesses, they have
the option of offshoring, importing the goods. If wages go up,
price then also go up and consumers will look elsewhere for
other products.
And let me echo what Mr. Wallace said a moment ago. If
companies can hire more workers, they will hire more middle
managers and salespeople and others, middle class jobs for
native-born Americans that complement that. For engineers and
hi-tech workers, wages have been going up and the unemployment
rate is not 4 or 3 percent, it is 2 percent. It is rock bottom
low.
About the welfare and the safety net, you are a good fiscal
conservative, and I understand the question. You know,
immigrants do not qualify for a lot of welfare programs. If you
become a green card holder, for 5 years you do not qualify for
those programs. Your relatives have to sign an affidavit that
they will support you. And we all know from experience,
immigrants come here to work. They do not come here to go on
welfare. Recent BLS figures showed that the labor force
participation rate of male immigrants is 10 percentage points
higher than native-born Americans. It is 77 percent versus 67
percent. Immigrants come here to work and to save and to build
a better life and we should facilitate that. Thank you.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you.
Mr. Sabino?
Mr. SABINO. Sure. I would agree with what Mr. Griswold
said, and I would also say that we have been increasing our
wages across industry wide. One thing that also is increasing
is our backlog. Our backlog is at record levels and it is
really unfair to consumers that have to wait. If you call for a
roof leak, you have to wait 6 weeks. If you want a new roof,
you are going to wait 12 weeks. So that is increasing.
We have two employees. Shane Gibson, an employee at Deer
Park Roofing. He worked 60-plus hours last week. His coworker,
Bo Huff, he has worked 60-plus hours the last 2 weeks. These
American workers, the immigrant complements these American
workers, and these guys would like to spend time with their
family. They do not want to work 60-plus hours a week. So.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you.
Mr. Shoare?
Mr. SHOARE. Yeah. We would actually love to pay more money
to the American worker if we could find them because all the
extra expense that we actually have bringing in the foreign
workers is significant. Our challenge is, as I said in the
statement, our typical work is not the 9:00 to 5:00 day. It
might be 2 hours in the morning and then 3 hours in the
evening, and then obviously, the youngsters play weekends and
it is weekend work. So that is really the biggest challenge
that we have.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much.
Mr. Wallace, I do not have a whole lot of time left, but go
ahead.
Mr. WALLACE. Sure, thank you.
So I think at both ends of the skills spectrum, so in terms
of STEM companies, often they are looking for people with very
specific skills. Not being able to find someone for a specific
role which be already paying quite well can hinder them from
being able to grow further and hire more American workers here.
Additionally, sort of in the agriculture sector, we worked with
a farmer in Texas, in Lubbock, Texas, who had to destroy 10,000
acres of crops because he could not find enough workers.
Certainly, I know that he would have paid workers more if he
could find them. And now, other people in transportation who
are sort of moving those goods across the country have lost
their jobs as a result.
Immigrants are also consumers. So they hold $1.1 trillion
in consumer spending power, so it is not just that they are
filling key roles but that they actually can create more jobs
by spending to support local businesses.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you.
My time is expired, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman's time has expired.
Now we recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Crow,
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Innovation and Workforce
Development for 5 minutes.
Mr. CROW. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Sabino, thank you for being here and sharing about the
specific issues that the roofing industry faces. In my
district, Curt and Suzie Boyd own Academy Roofing. I think you
might know them.
Mr. SABINO. I do.
Mr. CROW. And they have shared many of the similar concerns
that you raised here today. In fact, just last week, Curt went
to complete an estimate at a condominium community and
determined the project would cost $500,000 to $750,000. That
would be business for his company. And sadly, he said, and I
quote his words, he said, ``It would have been a perfect fit
for our company and it was absolutely painful to pass on the
opportunity'' because he just simply did not have the employees
to complete the job.
So Academy Roofing has actually recently gone for 85 to 50
field employees because they have not had any success in
attracting new employees for all the reasons you described.
So it is my understanding that the Strengthening Career and
Technical Education for the 21st Century Act or Perkins, did
not contain any provisions to train immigrants, and it is
pretty clear after hearing what you and some of the others have
said that we are leaving value on the table here. You know, we
are not growing businesses. We are not contributing and giving
back to the economies of our communities in the way that we
can, and that we cannot address our labor shortage without
immigrants.
So how could we strengthen Perkins to include training for
immigrants? And do you see that as a viable solution here?
Mr. SABINO. Yeah, I do. Curt is a friend of me, so I feel
his pain. We have similar situations where we are turning down
work. We are raising prices. There are long wait times for
roofing services. So what the NRCA has done is created a
program called ProCertification. And we are working with career
and technical education now. We have had meetings over the last
month with leadership of these organizations to get our
ProCertification program in, to give roofing workers across the
country a certification, a symbol. We need to start respecting
ourselves. We need to start respecting the American trade.
The Career and Technical Act, thank you for everyone that
supported that. We really appreciate it. I think that what we
are doing with our ProCertification is really going to make a
big impact on the individuals, but that would fit perfectly
into what you are saying.
Mr. CROW. I would welcome others' thoughts as well.
Mr. Griswold?
Mr. GRISWOLD. Not on that particular program. Thanks.
Mr. CROW. Mr. Shoare?
Mr. SHOARE. No.
Mr. CROW. Okay. Mr. Shoare, you mentioned, you talked about
the challenges of seasonal work. I actually held a roundtable
just a few weeks ago with a number of farmers, fruit and
vegetable growers in my district who expressed similar concerns
and that there are challenges in not only getting the quantity
of H-2 visas but getting them in the times when you need them.
And one of the solutions they proposed, and I know that you are
not in the agriculture industry, but they had proposed moving
the process from Department of Labor and DHS to USDA. So trying
to better situate it in a place where they could understand the
nature of seasonal work.
Do you think there is a lack of kind of understanding of
the seasonality and the temporal element of the visa program?
And if so, would moving the programs to areas that would better
understand that help? Or do you have any other solutions?
Mr. SHOARE. Yeah. I think Congress should take the lead in
this and not DHS. It is quite interesting that the cap for the
first part of the year, which is October 1, where that starts
which are mostly the ski companies, there is never a cap issue
in that. But then April 1st, when obviously there is not--we
are pretty unusual in this field, but you have got the
agricultural people. You have got the landscapers. The weather
is better for the roof people. That cap is obviously met within
24 hours. So personally, I think it should be Congress's
decision, and I think they can look at the need and obviously
this year, to receive 95,000 applications for 33,000 to me is a
pretty simple solution. That is three times the need of what we
get. And then when we actually got the additional visas, it
actually took DHS 11 weeks to give a further 30,000 visas. And
at that point they limited it to return workers. So companies
like ours, when we realized there could be a shortage, we used
our first visas on our more experienced people, and then when
the cap relief was given we scrambled, and we have managed to
find 45 other return workers. So it is just not a very good
understanding of the situation.
Mr. CROW. Thank you.
I yield back, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman yields back.
The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Hern, Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax, and Capital Access is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HERN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member
Chabot, and our witnesses for being here today to testify on
immigration and small business workforce.
As a small business owner and businessman for over 34
years, I know firsthand how valuable legal immigration
practices are to our workforce. I feel your pain.
This includes knowledge about various visa programs like H-
1, H-2 visas. Like several of my colleagues, I fully support
these programs and think they are a great tool to supplement
our forces in various industries such as hospitality and
agricultural industries.
First question is just simple yes or no. Each of you
discussed these programs in your testimony and it is something
I would like to ask you about now. Would each of you support
legislation which increases the number of H-1, H-2 work visas,
expands the number of green cards, and lengthens the DACA
eligibility?
We will start, Mr. Wallace?
Mr. WALLACE. I believe so, yes.
Mr. SHOARE. Yes.
Mr. SABINO. Yes.
Mr. GRISWOLD. Yes. To qualify it, as a 501(c)3, we do not
endorse specific legislation, but those are great ideas.
Mr. HERN. Okay. So I thank you for all your answers, and I
find it interesting you say this because this exact proposal
was included in legislation last Congress. This legislation was
introduced by former Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte. It was
known as Goodlatte 1, Goodlatte 2, and we jokingly say
Goodlatte 3, kind of an amalgamation of all. It was voted on
last year and many of my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle had the opportunity to vote on these specific reforms and
voted against them. It is strange to me that people who claim
to be so supportive of certain policies but then vote them down
when presented them in legislation. It is the craziness of this
place. Unfortunately, it was not strange to my colleagues who
did this last year.
I want to ask you another question. Again, being a
businessperson that has almost 1,000 employees that are kind of
across all the industries, entry level to executive level,
about E-Verify, a program that I have always supported and
wish, you know, I have used it a lot in all my small business
for a number of years. E-Verify is the very successful program
which allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of
their employees who work in the United States, and it has
helped me to easily verify the identity and employment
eligibility of new employees. I know it sometimes seems
contradictory that you would want to do something other than I-
9, but I think you all would agree as people who represent the
business, who hire the employees, know that I-9s are a fallacy
if we think we are keeping illegal workers out of the workforce
in America.
You do not have to answer that; I know.
This also helps to ensure that best labor practices are for
those jobs, and legal worker are usually given better
conditions than illegal workers. Not by the employer. For the
most part there are some bad actors, but certainly, how they
are housed and how they figure out how to stay illegal.
Would each of you agree that tools like E-Verify can be
beneficial in ensuring legal employment and the best working
conditions for Americans?
What are your thoughts on E-Verify? Mr. Shoare, I will
start with you.
Mr. SHOARE. I think it is a great system as long as it does
not become like many of our systems, it is so clunky to deal
with that small businesses have to add employers to deal with
that situation. I agree the I-9 system for us in the next 4
weeks, we actually bring in J-1 visa people to work on our
camps and to have our local people fill an I-9 in, forward it
to our corporate office, have them locked away is a challenge
to say the least. But what we have to be careful is we do not
make the new system so clunky that people barely use those as
well.
Mr. HERN. Yeah, I will tell you, having used E-Verify for a
number of years, we need to have either/or. I-9s are a waste of
time. They do not serve the purpose that was originally
intended.
Mr. Sabino?
Mr. SABINO. Yes. We currently use E-Verify. But it is
inconsistent. It is not necessarily used across all
construction industries. So, but we currently use it.
Mr. HERN. So to your point, it is really a disadvantage for
somebody who wants to do a better job of understanding who is
here legally, and those who do not use it may have a propensity
to have people come to work for them, even though we are all
required Federally to use I-9, people come to work for them
that could possibly be not legal in the United States.
Mr. SABINO. It is not required, so a lot of people do not
use it. If you are working on a government project it is
required. So again, it is just inconsistent throughout all
construction.
Mr. HERN. So you would advocate for it to be consistent
across everybody so we have a level playing field?
Mr. SABINO. Sure.
Mr. HERN. Okay.
Let me just conclude here because I do not want to go over
my time here. I thank you all again for being here. As I said,
I feel your pain, regardless. You know, no politics are being
played when you are a small business person. You are trying to
survive, figure out the nuances. You live on the other side of
the legislation that comes out of this place, the statehouses.
It is very, very difficult to create jobs. All you want to do
is you come up here, tell your story, create jobs, put
Americans to work, and just live a prosperous life for you and
your employees.
So I really appreciate you. I have said this many, many
times before. I really appreciate the witnesses regardless of
which side of the aisle they are representing because you tell
us what really matters in America, that 70 percent of jobs in
America are created by people like yourselves. I thank you so
much for what you do.
I yield back my time.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Davids, the gentlelady from Kansas, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Ms. DAVIDS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Well, I am especially excited today to have Mr. Shoare here
from Challenger Sports, which is a successful small business in
the Third District in Kansas. Mr. Shoare has spoken to an issue
that I have heard about from a lot of constituents in Kansas.
And businesses in my district are definitely suffering due to
the Department of Homeland Security's slow and inefficient,
insufficient releases of the H-2B visas which Mr. Shoare
already touched on a little bit.
Local economies suffer when small businesses cannot provide
the goods and services that happen because of these long waits
and insufficient visa releases. And we need a better, more
efficient system for admitting temporary, non-U.S. workers to
combat the shortage that many of the businesses and folk who
are testifying today have spoken about.
Mr. Shoare mentioned in his testimony that the portal had
an issue and actually crashed during the attempt to get his
visas on January 1st at 12:01, that there was a crash at that
point. And I feel like that actually highlights this constant
disruption that business owners are facing, whether it is
landscaping, roofing, companies like Challenger Sports.
And so Mr. Shoare, I would love to hear you speak a little
more as a small business owner who is in Lenexa, Kansas. Can
you elaborate on, in addition to the crash of this site, some
of the other challenges that you are facing? I am particularly
interested in how this business that is in Kansas is impacting
local economies across the country.
Mr. SHOARE. Yeah. Obviously, as time goes, the H-2B is an
interesting beast that we deal with. And we have an incredible
attorney that works for us. They had 35 of their employees
sitting in their office at midnight on New Year's Eve. I am not
sure too many people would have done that. So that they could
literally press the electronic button to put through all our
visas. Unfortunately, as time goes on, everybody is doing that
and just the amount of stuff that went through the system, it
just could not cope with it. So it literally crashed. It took
them 7 days to correct that, and then obviously, at that point,
that is when that day there were 95,000 applications.
As Congressman Davids said, we work across 27 parts of the
country. We work in Colorado. We work in Oklahoma. We work in
Florida. And our impact is really nationwide. We are
corporately based in Kansas, but then we have satellite offices
in the other areas. So we believe we are providing great
services for the whole country as a whole but as we have said,
it is getting to a point that we are feeling unless we have a
guarantee this year that we will get the H-2B visas that we
require, then we will be discussing stopping the program
totally because it is just harming our reputation
significantly. And that would greatly affect the company as a
whole and layoffs would be significant, not just in Kansas but
across the country.
Ms. DAVIDS. Thank you.
And then Mr. Shoare, you made a great point earlier about
the timing of the caps for the visas and the seasonality of
that.
Mr. Sabino, I am curious if you have thoughts about the
timing of the caps, and even if it were increased to 100,000 H-
2B visas, if they were split evenly, would that cause any
issues for your company or your type of company?
Mr. SABINO. So our companies, NRCA companies, our member
companies, there are a lot of contractors that are currently
using H-2B visas. My company, we are in Cincinnati and we work
year-round, so the H-2B is more of a seasonal issue for us. So,
but H-2B is important for us but it does not meet the workforce
needs that the cap is so small that the amount of increases for
H-2B is so minor that it is not making a significant impact and
benefit to small business.
Ms. DAVIDS. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentlelady yields back.
And now we recognize the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr.
Hagedorn for 5 minutes.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity.
Witnesses, appreciate you being here.
I would like to first acknowledge a good friend of mine who
is in the audience, Kirk Garrison, who I grew up with in
Truman, Minnesota. Kirk is a small businessman. He is a
teacher, educator, and also a veteran of the Air Force of the
United States. And he plays trumpet for the Gary Sinise
Lieutenant Dan Band, and they do wonderful things for our
troops, raising money and entertaining them. So it is good to
see you, Kirk. Thanks for that.
I support a lot of these programs and am supportive of the
concepts of what you are trying to accomplish. But I think that
sometimes what gets lost is the problems are exacerbated
because of bad government policies, mostly at the Federal
level. You talk about you want to bring in more people on visas
and that is fine. But we have a problem in our Nation with
people overstaying their visas. We do not criminalize people
like they do in almost every other country around the world for
overstaying visas. And we do not even know who is here years
later, who is left. And I talked to some people just this
morning from the Department of Homeland Security and said we
need to do a better job on that. I know the President has been
working on that, and I am going to support him in any way
possible, but I think that would be helpful to gaining support
for what you are trying to do.
Also, we have a problem on the border, and there are a lot
of folks that do not just want temporary people coming here to
work, they want permanent folks to be recognized to stay in
America for the rest of their lives. And yet, if you do not
have a secure border, everybody can keep just running over the
border or flying into the country and overstaying visas and
undercutting the programs, the ideas, the concepts that you are
trying to get forward that could help people. So I do not get
that too much. We need support for these things across the
board and across the aisle.
And lastly I would say it sounds like--and my friend Mr.
Hern brought up E-Verify. That is not really biometrically
applied at this time. Employers like you should be able to know
who you are dealing with, and if it is somebody who is not
lawfully to be in that job, then you should not be penalized
for going along with the program when others do not. So that
needs to be more uniform as well.
But the President, last week I believe it was, came out
with a new, an updated program for immigration based on merit.
And it seems like what he is trying to do would be helpful to
what your needs are. To have more people coming to America
legally, and we do that a million times every year. We are the
most generous country in the world. Come here legally based
upon merit with skills, speak the language, assimilation, all
these things that are going to help them be good Americans
right from the beginning, contribute to our society, sustain
themselves, not be on social welfare programs down the line.
Do any of you have any thoughts about the President's
policy on merit-based immigration?
Mr. GRISWOLD. Congressman, thanks for that question. I
think the President's proposal was a step in the right
direction. We do need more high-skilled workers. I would say
let us proceed with some caution on the merit-based system.
Canada and Australia have merit-based systems and they have run
into some issues where there is a mismatch between who comes in
and the needs of industry. We have a demand-driven, industry-
driven system where a person's principal merit is that an
American company wants to hire them and put them to work.
The other aspect of the President's plan, is that it did
not really address, the workers that could work for Mr.
Sabino's company, who may not meet the President's test of
merit, and yet, they have a lot of merit for small businesses
trying to expand and meet their customers' needs. So I think
there is some real caution due in proceeding in that area.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Yep.
Mr. SABINO. We appreciate the fact that we are taking steps
and we are talking about immigration. But the President's plan
would be exclusive of a typical roofing installer. So it would
not----
Mr. HAGEDORN. The President's plan though does not call for
100 percent merit-based. It just moves it up the ladder to
about three-quarters. Not excluding people that you are talking
about.
Mr. SABINO. It is for highly skilled. My understanding, it
is a preliminary plan, but my understanding is that it is for
highly-skilled individuals. We need critical skills. So it
would not benefit us as currently presented.
Mr. HAGEDORN. That is not my understanding. But anyway, go
ahead, sir.
Mr. SHOARE. Today, that would have no bearing on why I am
here on the H-2B program, so.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Okay.
Mr. WALLACE. In addition to some of the comments that were
already raised, I would be curious to see more details about
the proposal. I think there is a lot of evidence that folks who
arrive without full fluency in English are able to acquire
English and learn that over time as they are here, but are able
to work and contribute in the meantime.
To your earlier points about sort of tracking, I definitely
think things like an entry/exit system, for example, border
security, should be part of an overall package like the one
that was passed back in 2014 through the Senate Comprehensive
Immigration Reform. The comment I hear most often from
employers about E-Verify is that, you know, it is no secret
that there are undocumented workers in our economy. Roughly, a
third of agricultural workers are undocumented. Without pairing
that with a way for workers to arrive through a legal process,
it would not really address the underlying challenges. And in
addition, sometimes E-Verify may misidentify folks who are U.S.
citizens as unauthorized to work.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Well, we should have a legal program to have
people here fill those jobs. And so I appreciate that. Thank
you.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman's time has expired.
We now recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms. Chu,
Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Investigation, Oversight, and
Regulations for 5 minutes.
Ms. CHU. Mr. Griswold, I was impressed by your knowledge of
the employment visa system.
Each year only 140,000 permanent employment-based visas are
available under the Immigration and Nationality Act. But the
backlog is enormous. Currently, there are 395,000 individuals
residing in the U.S. whose applications for a permanent
employment-based visa has been approved by USCIS but who are
still waiting for an adjustment of status and there is an
additional 113,000 individuals outside the U.S. who are waiting
for a status adjustment. Clearly, something needs to be done to
clear the backlogs, and even though there is this backlog, the
visas that are not used are not rolled over into the next year.
Instead, they are dropped.
So next month, I plan on reintroducing my Reuniting
Families Act which has a provision to recapture unused
employment-based visas from 1992 to 2016, and allows unused
visas in future years to automatically roll over into the next
year. And the data shows that this would make 326,000 permanent
employment-based visas available.
In your opinion, what impact would this provision have on
small businesses?
Mr. GRISWOLD. Thank you, Congresswoman.
It would be beneficial for small business. They need
workers just as larger businesses do. Combined with raising the
number of employment-based visas, I support excluding spouses
and minor children from the cap. And Congresswoman, we need to
be able to get rid of these per-country quotas where a lot of
those backlogs come from. The quotas limits green cards for any
one country to about 25,000, which is a binding constraint on
immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, China, and India. And
so people are turned away from green cards, not because they
are not qualified or lack merit but solely on the country that
they are from. There is majority bipartisan support, there were
over 300 cosponsors in the House for a bill that would have
done away with those quotas. All of that, together along with
that idea you outlined would be a giant step forward.
Ms. CHU. And I really want to thank you for addressing the
per-country cap issue. In fact, my Reuniting Families Act would
raise the per country cap from 7 percent to 20 percent, and I
think it would help to solve this backlog problem in a very big
way. So thank you for that.
Mr. Wallace, I wanted to address the merit-based system. Of
course, President Trump's system would drastically reduce
family-based visas in favor of a merit-based program. Right
now, the visas are 66 percent family-based and 12 percent
employment-based. But Trump wants to reverse this so that 66
percent of the visas are merit-based, but merit-based as
defined by President Trump meaning they would all be highly
skilled with high education, with high English proficiency and
have also passed a civics test.
So first of all, I would like to point out that our current
family-based visa system, the people that are coming over are
more highly educated than the average American, and I have also
observed that those coming from family-based visas create
significant jobs. Even those who do not have English
proficiency, I always remember the story of Jerry Yang, who did
not speak a word of English except for the word ``shoe,'' but
went on to found Yahoo and countless jobs.
So I wanted to ask you, you mentioned in your testimony
that immigrants not only feel shortages in the labor market but
also create jobs for Americans at every job level. Can you
expand on the variety of labor needs in this country?
Mr. WALLACE. So I understand your question is about the
role of immigrants as entrepreneurs. Yeah? So I mean, if you
look at the sort of share of the population overall, as I said,
about 13 percent of the U.S. is foreign-born. Immigrants are
overrepresented as entrepreneurs, so they are about 20 percent
of our entrepreneurs. And that is true across all types of
industries. So in terms of STEM, I think I shared a statistic
about the fact that close to half of Silicon Valley hi-tech
firms were founded by immigrants, but also Main Street
businesses. So if you look at communities across the country,
if you look at Dayton, Ohio, if you look at Anchorage, Alaska,
if you look anywhere across the country, immigrants are
starting grocery stores, restaurants, retail businesses. That
creates a lot of economic activity and makes those places more
interesting and more vibrant and grows their economies. And as
I also said, you know, immigrants are not only coming in as job
creators and not only as workers but as consumers. And so they
have a lot of spending power that can contribute to that
economic growth as well.
Ms. CHU. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentlelady yields back.
And Mr. Stauber from Minnesota, Ranking Member of the
Subcommittee on Contracting and Infrastructure, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And to
Ranking Member Chabot, I could not agree with you more on the
visas, the H-1 and the H-2s.
So Northern Minnesota, we have a lot of seasonal workers, a
lot of resorts. If you go to the North Shore of Lake Superior,
it is extremely vibrant for about 7 months out of the year. And
I have been told by those small businesses, the owners, of
which I am also a small business owner in the city of Duluth,
but they are talking about that seasonal worker, they need that
workforce. In fact, one resort had talked about they were not
able to expand because they did not have the workers to support
the expansion.
So I would just say, this is more of a comment to the H-2B
temporary worker visas. I know in our district, and I am
hearing across the country, that we need more of that, the
seasonal workers that do a fantastic job not only with our
farmers on the western edge of the district but our resort
area, resort owners. And then on North Shore of Lake Superior.
So am hearing, would it be safe to say, that all four of the
witnesses today would support the extension of the H-2B visas,
the allocation, the additional allocation?
Mr. SHOARE. Yeah, without a doubt that needs to be done.
But again, this has been talked about for the past 2 years, and
every year as we go into the preparing phase, which for us the
preparing phase is September 1st, it is just so difficult to
plan if Congress does not take hold of the situation and say
this is what the need is, this is what we will do.
Mr. STAUBER. So you want certainty from Congress?
Mr. SHOARE. Yes.
Mr. GRISWOLD. Congressman, I would suggest a series of
reforms. Issue more H-2B visas so that we do not have to have
this ridiculous scrum on the application date and small
businesses will always come out on the short end of that.
Secondly, reduce the paperwork, which again puts small
businesses at a disadvantage. A big company can hire more
lawyers and people to process it. Congress should look at
expanding it beyond the seasonality. Some businesses have a
seasonal nature, but roofing, as we have just heard, that is
not seasonal in a lot of the country, and so it is a bit of a
mismatch there. Dairy farmers--I am from the Midwest--Wisconsin
and Minnesota--that is not a seasonal enterprise, and they
cannot find the workers they need. So those would be some great
reforms for small businesses across America.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you.
Mr. Sabino?
Mr. SABINO. We would obviously like to see more H-2B visas
issued. However, we would also like to see a more comprehensive
approach to immigration reform. I mentioned H.R. 1740 earlier.
We have to address the TPS issue. We have to address DACA.
There has got to be a broader approach because, you know, one
of the problems with H-2B visas, roofers tend to migrate within
the country and that we are not able to do that on an H-2B
visa. So if somebody owned a roofing company in Minnesota and
they were going down to Iowa or Nebraska to do some work over
the wintertime, that H-2B visa is useless for them, so.
Mr. STAUBER. Mr. Wallace?
Mr. WALLACE. Yeah. I would just echo the point about DACA
and TPS in particular, in addition to some of these temporary
worker programs, that there are more than a million people
already working at all skill levels, and so obviously, taking
those folks out of the economy could be disastrous.
Mr. STAUBER. And Mr. Griswold, you talk about the
certainty. As a small business owner myself and hearing from
others, that is what they are looking for from the Federal
Government, certainty. The uncertainty is the apprehension for
not hiring or not even going in business, or leaving the
business altogether. And I think, I really appreciate your
comments from your experience. It just follows what Ranking
Member Chabot talked about, the ability to have the discussion
on allowing these workers to come in legally. I mean, every one
of you talked about legally, and I think that is what we can
agree on. And we do have work to do, but I appreciate all your
comments. Thank you.
And I yield back, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman yields back.
And Mr. Evans from Pennsylvania, Vice Chair of the
committee, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, appreciate you
for showing your leadership on this issue, for leading this.
And then I would like to thank all of the witnesses who are
presenting to us today.
An issue that I am very much interested in and we discussed
it on the Ways and Means Committee, is concern regarding
workers' protections, which we talk about in the trade
agreement.
As you look at ways to improve our Nation's immigration
system and address labor shortages through these programs, how
can we incorporate workers' rights and protections in this
discussion? I am interested in. Through the whole panel we can
go through.
Mr. GRISWOLD. Congressman, thank you for that question. I
am not going to weigh in to the details of that, but I will say
that I think the best worker protection for immigrant workers
is being legal and being able to move from one employer to
another. So if the conditions and the pay are not good, they
can move to another employer and enjoy that competition. Also,
I know it is a thorny issue, but finding some way to legalize
the 10 million here who are undocumented. Two-thirds of them
have been here for 10 years or more. They are woven into the
fabric of their workplace and their community. And by becoming
legal, research shows that their pay goes up, their protections
in the workplace are enhanced, and that lifts the whole lower
pay segment of the workforce.
Mr. SABINO. So when you are talking about worker
protections, again, I am back to H.R. 1740, there are worker
protections in the bill itself. I think also one of the things
in regard to workers' protection is our ProCertification
program which we are training employees on how to be safe, on
how to do things properly. So I think the compressive training
and education that we are doing at the National Roofing
Contractors Association and the protections in H.R. 1740 would
address your concerns.
Mr. SHOARE. I think the present H-2B program has an
inordinate amount of protection for the worker, and I think the
DOL managed that well. The unfortunate thing is often it is not
everybody's situation to pay those workers the way they should
be paying them. So I think with our company it is almost that
we are the largest at what we do so we get under the
microscope. And I think the protection for the H-2B workers we
bring in is actually very good.
Mr. WALLACE. And I would just echo Mr. Griswold's comment
that helping folks and allowing them to legalize their status
here in the U.S. would provide a number of protections. And
also to reinforce one of the points I made earlier, which is
that in terms of U.S.-borne workers, an increase in diversity
in metropolitan areas is associated with higher wages and more
job creation both for large and small businesses. So I think we
need to stop thinking about this as a zero sum game and think
about the opportunity that is created by an influx of workers
into a lot of these metro areas.
Mr. EVANS. I come from the city of Philadelphia, which is
the home of the leading health facilities, Children's Hospital,
University of Pennsylvania, Temple Hospital, Einstein,
Jefferson. Healthcare professionals and the people it serves
are very important to me.
The question I want to ask is can you please explain to us
what do we risk by losing in our healthcare industry if we do
not find effective ways to address this shortage?
Mr. GRISWOLD. Yes, Congressman. Immigration is very
important to the U.S. healthcare sector. I had a minor heart
procedure a couple of months ago and it just reminded me of the
diversity of the health care from the nurses to the doctors and
the staff. And as I mentioned, we have the H-1B program, and we
have a J-1 visa waiver for doctors. Congress should look to
expand those programs, maybe do away with the cap for H-1B
visas in the healthcare sector as we do in my field of
education and nonprofits. Nursing is an important category.
Some of the nurses may not qualify under H-1B, and yet they
have critical skills. So I think Congress should look at all of
that. We have growing healthcare needs in this country as the
baby boomers retire. You are exactly right. This is something
important we need to do to deliver high-quality health care to
the American people.
Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back the balance
of my time.
Chairwoman VELAZQUEZ. The gentleman yields back.
And the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Schneider, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you. And I want to actually pick up on
the comments of my colleague from Pennsylvania on the
healthcare shortage. We are also seeing a severe shortage of
physicians. Expected to be as many as 120,000 by the year 2030.
And I would like to say some of my friends who are doctors are
saying I am reaching the time in my career where I am ready to
retire. And as a baby boomer, I say to them, I am reaching the
point in my life where I am just hitting my stride as a
patient. You cannot retire. We need to have these doctors. But,
you know, I live in Chicago. It is one issue. In rural
communities and other medically underserved areas, this is
reaching potentially crisis levels.
And immigration may be an excellent way to find this
talent, especially because so many of the world's best and
brightest are coming to our shores, to our schools to get their
education. But our immigration laws, our outdated laws stifle
industries like the ones you have been talking about. They
force us to turn away so many qualified, good people, including
physicians every year who want to stay in the United States,
whether it is starting their business or developing their
health care, their physician's practice.
Today, I actually reintroduced legislation, the Conrad
State 30 and Physician Access Act with my colleague from Iowa
and fellow Committee member, Ms. Finkenauer. The Conrad State
30 program allows foreign doctors studying in medical schools,
it grants them a visa if they serve in some of these medically
underserved areas for at least 3 years. The legislation would
extend the program and expand the number of physician slots in
each state. But it would also ensure that these communities
have access to the qualified, talented workforce that they so
desperately need.
So to the panelists here today, I want to thank you for
sharing your perspective, and I know we have to do so much more
to develop this, and health care is just a piece of it with the
baby boomers aging.
I know that, Mr. Wallace, you mentioned it in your opening
remarks. Mr. Griswold, you touched on it. I am happy to open it
up to anyone on the panel if you want to touch on this.
Mr. WALLACE. I could just add a couple of things. Looking
at the role of immigrants in some of these occupations,
actually, if you look at both physicians and surgeons, as well
as nursing and home health aides, immigrants are twice as
likely as the U.S.-born to be in those occupations. And that in
some rural counties across the country there are fewer than 10
doctors for every 100,000 residents. So it certainly is
reaching crisis levels.
Mr. SCHNEIDER. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Griswold?
Mr. GRISWOLD. Expanding the Conrad visa waiver, J-1 visa
waiver is a good approach. Both expanding the number, and I
understand that has to be re-approved by Congress each year,
and maybe adding to the certainty by a longer approval period.
Also, this is where the per-country quotas start to bite.
You have qualified, for example, Indian doctors who have every
qualification for a green card to continue to practice medicine
here and they have to go back solely because they were born in
India and we have reached the green card cap on that. So doing
away with the per-country quotas or raising it at least would
also address critical health care needs.
Mr. SCHNEIDER. Great.
Mr. Sabino, did you want to say something?
Mr. SABINO. Yes, certainly. Obviously, we recognize the
diversity in the healthcare field. We also should recognize the
diversity have you had a roof put on or any kind of
construction projects lately? There is a lot of diversity in
the roofing industry as well. So we want immigration to be
inclusive of our industry as well.
Mr. SCHNEIDER. Well, let me shift gears and touch on that.
And I appreciate your comment.
It is not just the roofing industry. Before this hearing I
was at a meeting, conversation, talking about the work, the
importance of franchising. But, you know, franchises are a way
for entrepreneurs to enter into the business world by starting
a business with the help of a franchisor. Many of these often
are immigrants as well. So, so many of the fields we have,
whether it is looking for employees or entrepreneurs starting
to get the kick start, immigrants are critical to that.
Mr. Shoare, go on and jump in.
Mr. SHOARE. I would just like to add, and maybe this is
just too commonsensical, right now we have an OPT program. We
also apply for H-1Bs. This year, 200,000 applications for
85,000 slots, and these people who have been in the United
States 34 years, got a degree, because they do not get through
the lottery, now they have on other option apart from going
back to school and now doing a fake master's degree on their
second master's degree. So to me, it would be simple to look at
that situation, and while the cap is such a problem, maybe
extend that CPT program for a 2-year program so at least they
have an opportunity.
Mr. SCHNEIDER. Great. Thank you.
My time has expired. I yield back.
Mr. EVANS. I recognize the gentleman who is Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax, and Capital Access from
the great state of New Jersey, Mr. Kim.
Mr. KIM. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thank you to the
gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding over to me.
I just wanted to, first of all, thank the panel for coming
out and sharing your insights here. I mean, certainly from my
district's point of view, everything we can do to try to help
small businesses, you know, fill these critical job needs is so
important.
And I wanted to just kind of hone in on the temporary visa
program, and I will keep this brief. But I am just trying to
get a sense from my own and just some of the different
perspectives that are out there, certainly as a district that
has the Jersey shoreline. You know, I hear about this from some
of the businesses on that end.
But Mr. Sabino, you kind of added a different perspective I
have not heard from before. So I just kind of wanted to ask for
your insights as someone who is a small business owner of a
roofing company, some of the concerns that I hear about,
especially from certain labor groups about the temporary visa
program is about the downward pressure that it might put on
wages and working conditions. And this is something that I have
talked about to some of the businesses in my district and hear
from them their perspectives. But I just wanted to hear from
you since this is, you know, your business is a different one
than the ones I have had a chance to talk to. What is your
perspective on that? And in particular, on the roofing
industry, which utilizes a fair and sizable number of temporary
visas. You know, what are some of the steps that are being
taken so that we are trying to do what we can to look out for
American jobs, American workers as well?
Mr. SABINO. Sure. So when it comes to American workers,
again, I testified earlier about the complement that immigrants
do for this. Our pay is based on merit. Can you perform the
work safely? Can you do it productively? Do you have good
interactions with the customer? Can you install something in a
quality manner as a craftsman? So we have merit-based pay
systems, not pay based on national origin or anything like
that.
I will say, American wages, the downward pressure on
American wages, I hear that a lot, and I just want to comment.
I had a conversation with our commercial sales manager about 3
weeks ago. And I talked to him and I said, you cannot sell
anything. Your entire team, you cannot sell anything for the
rest of the summer because we are full. And when you talk about
wages, that is money right out of their pocket. That is sales
commissions that they are not getting because they are not
going to sell anything. Our production capacity is full. Also,
up and down our supply chain, when you talk about American
wages being affected, American wages are being affected through
our distributors and our manufacturers who were flat last year.
The economy is booming. Our backlog is growing. The
demographics just do not support where American workers are
going to get this work done.
So our supply chain, we came to Washington, D.C. in April.
We came with our Roofing Day in D.C., and we came with one
voice. Manufacturers, distributors, contractors all speaking
towards the immigration issue and towards career and technical
education. So we had over 400 people come to D.C., and the
entire industry is united around this, but that is what is
affecting American wages, the inability for us to get the roof
projects completed.
Mr. KIM. Well, thank you. Thank you for that perspective.
I always just want to make sure that when we are having
these discussions here on the Hill and, you know, as I am
having these discussions in my own district that we are really
able to make sure that we are reflecting your voices and your
perspectives on this going into it. So that was just important
for me to hear directly from you of just how it has been
affecting your industry and certainly it will be something that
I would kind of wrap into some of the other discussions that I
have been having. So I appreciate that.
I yield back.
Mr. EVANS. I thank the gentleman for yielding back.
And now I go to the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on
Innovation, Workforce Development, Ranking Member Balderson
from Ohio.
Mr. BALDERSON. Thank you, Chairman Evans. It is good to see
you in the big chair there. So thank you. We are up here having
fun, are we not?
Again, I spoke to all of you earlier before Representative
Chabot got here and just, you know, I want to express to you,
thank you all for being here very much. I really appreciate it.
And I will not repeat it again but I really want to emphasize
this today and the concern that is out there for workforce
development. And that is one of the biggest things that I face
back in the district, and I have a great relationship with
Chairman Crow. Jason and I are going to work together on this
Innovation and Workforce Development, and we need your help in
coming up with some of these solutions. As I said earlier, you
know, Ohio now has a 3.3 percent unemployment, which is the
same as the national average here in this country, and that is
a good problem to have. But we need more workers for jobs to
get filled.
So I understand the need for raising the caps on H-1B and
employment-based green cards, but I think this only addresses
half of the problem. Mr. Sabino brings up a good point that a
solution to the labor shortage would ideally be fixed through a
two-track approach. As Ranking Member of the Innovation and
Workforce Development Subcommittee, I am also a big supporter
of career and technical education as it means so much added to
our domestic workforce.
So my question for Mr. Griswold and Mr. Sabino is how do we
here in Congress balance the development and enhancement of
both our domestic and foreign workforces so that we have
healthy growth and opportunity in each, rather just than one
dominating the other?
Mr. GRISWOLD. Congressman, I think you put your finger on
exactly the issue Congress should be focusing on not
restricting immigration but equipping Americans to take full
advantage of the opportunities being created in our 21st
century economy. And workforce development and all that.
I will just echo what has been said here several times.
Immigrant workers tend to complement American workers. American
workers have certain native advantages, such as language
skills. And as immigrants come in, even lower skilled Americans
have opportunities to move up and be, say, the manager of the
roofing team or something like that. Studies show that as the
presence of immigrants rises, Americans are more likely to stay
in school. You know, just by getting a high school diploma and
going out in the workforce, you are giving yourself a 35
percent pay increase from what you would be given going out
without a high school degree. And immigration helps encourage
Americans to do that. So that is the right conversation to be
having. How can we equip ourselves through education? Everybody
does not need a college degree, but perhaps instead an
associate degree, technical training, that sort of thing. That
is exactly what Congress and the Committee should be focusing
on. Thank you.
Mr. SABINO. I will say that our native-born population is
trending away from the trades. It is really sad. Tradesman are
sometimes treated as second rate individuals. I can promise you
the people that I go to work with every day, the men and women
are not second rate citizens. So the more we can do on that
front is certainly welcome. And we are doing a lot. And we are
talking with those people. However, the demographics do not
look good. No matter how hard we try with career and technical
education, and promoting the trades for American workers,
still, in this country, American parents are having 1.8
children per household. We are at a 32-year low birth rate in
this country. So native-born workers are becoming less and
less. They are joining our industry less and less. So again, we
have to look at this as a two-track approach.
Mr. BALDERSON. Okay. Thank you. I am going to come back on
you just for a second because you said something that you are
trying to do some different things. Is there one thing in
particular that you and your organization and your company that
are doing to attract? I mean, are you going down to the middle
school? Are you starting in the high schools? I mean, I will
give you an example of something that I encountered with a
gentleman from Medina, Ohio, with manufacturing that actually
hired a firm to help him think outside the box. But Mr. Sabino,
what would be a good example of one thing that you do that you
feel is successful?
Mr. SABINO. Sure. So we are in all kinds of schools. We are
in high schools. We are in career and technical schools. We are
in vocational schools. We are in construction management
programs. We have three interns right now. Our three interns
are going to be the next project managers. So we are doing a
lot on that front. Again, training. If an American worker wants
a job, we will train you. We will onboard you for 6 weeks. We
will pay you good. We will provide you benefits. We will
provide health insurance, 401(k). You know, we will do
everything we can for an American worker. We just do not get
the applicants. And we spend more money advertising for
employees than we do for customers. We do not advertise for
customers. Why would you when your backlog is 12 weeks?
Mr. BALDERSON. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. I look
forward to working with you.
Mr. Chairman, I apologize for going over.
Mr. EVANS. Thank you. Thank the gentleman.
The next person is from the great state of Texas, Mr. Mark
Veasey.
Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to ask a question elated to what Mr. Sabino
mentioned before, and that is the population rate, the birth
rate that has happened in our country. Nobody is really talking
about that that often, particularly when the debates around
immigration come up. And so I wanted to ask anybody on the
panel what sort of detail have you looked into that issue? I
mean, I think that one of the things that has astonished me
that I think people miss was that during the housing bust that
happened in the early 2000s, the Mexican-American birth rate
plummeted to below the 2.1 that you need in order to repopulate
your society. And right now there have been a lot of
discussions in Russia, for instance, about their population
decline that they have had there, and they have done everything
they could to try to encourage people to have more kids. It is
not working. I think that everyone has probably seen the news
stories about Japan, about how they actually sell more adult
diapers in Japan than they do kids' diapers now. And that could
happen here if we do not really start looking at this issue
from all different facets.
So if you could just sort of touch on that a little bit
more, anybody on the panel.
Mr. Griswold? Please.
Mr. GRISWOLD. Congressman, thank you. That is a huge issue.
Our problem is not as severe as in Japan and Russia, but we do
have a problem. The Pew Research Center recently came out with
a report that showed that the pool of native-born Americans who
have native-born parents, that is actually shrinking and will
shrink by 8 million over the next 15 years or so. So any growth
that we have in our population is going to be from immigrants,
first and second generation immigrants.
Another recent study by Moody Analytics found that 80
percent of U.S. counties have shrinking working-age
populations. And it is especially intense in a lot of
Midwestern states and New England. Not so much Texas, but so we
literally have a shrinking pool of native-born workers in this
country, and we need immigrants if our businesses are going to
be able to continue to expand and invest and meet the demands
of customers here in the United States and around the world.
Mr. VEASEY. I think that you are absolutely right.
Mr. Sabino, I wanted to ask you, because you talked about
the stigma and parents sort of moving their kids away from
certain trades and jobs. Have you had a chance to like look at
the German model? And I do not like everything about that model
because I do not really necessarily like the tracking, but it
seems like with the pay discrepancies that they have there,
they are much smaller there than they are here. So a lot of
people think that that is one of the reasons why the trades do
not have as much of a stigma in Germany as they do here. Have
you looked at pay scale? And you know, when we saw a decline in
labor unions, for instance, in this country, we saw a big
decline in what people brought home in their checks at the end
of the week or at the end of the month. Have you like looked at
the pay discrepancies and how that sort of affects how people
feel about these jobs?
Mr. SABINO. Sure. Sure. To the German model, we actually
went to the Roof and Timber Show in Germany last year and we
have had a chance to meet with our German counterparts. So I
will say the German model is very successful. Germany, roofing
is the number one recognized trade in Germany. They are the
most respected trade. They also start roofing at the age of 14.
They start early. The current technical education starts very
early there.
In terms of the pay discrepancies, we are seeing wages go
up across the board. I am not seeing a huge gap in pay. We are
seeing wages go up, so.
Mr. VEASEY. There is one good book, if you have a chance,
there are several good books out, but there is a book that was
written by two professors in the Northeast. It is called
Rescaling America: Learning to Labor in the 21st Century. It is
an outstanding book if you have a chance to read it. But that
was one of the things that they pointed out was that the white
collar professions and the blue collar professions in Germany,
there is much less of a gap between what people bring home at
the end of the month than there is with the white collar and
blue collar gap here in America. And so that is something that
we should definitely look at in the future.
Mr. SABINO. I will say we do have foreman that make $75,000
a year or more. So again, it is based on skill. But there are
great opportunities in the roofing industry.
Mr. VEASEY. Good. Good. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. EVANS. Thank the gentleman.
First, I want to thank all of the witnesses for taking time
out of your very busy schedules. We really appreciate you
coming before this particular Committee.
As I said at the onset, I am glad we are having this
discussion. Our current immigration system is broken and out of
sync with the realities of our workforce. Small businesses and
farmers are unable to make decisions and are left bidding among
themselves. This is no way of treating our small business
community. And as we continue this discussion, it is vital that
we not forget the challenges they face every day.
I hope this conversation yields thoughtful solutions so
that the Nation's small employers get the workforce they need
to thrive and our country continues its long history
recognizing the contribution immigrants bring to our economy.
I would ask unanimous consent that members have 5
legislative days to submit statements and supporting materials
for the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
And if there is no further business to come before this
Committee, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:16 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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