The immigrant experience is embedded in everything and everyone who is an American today. It’s what ties together the famous food carts of Philadelphia and a Dayton-based metal manufacturing company. From whipping up delicious cuisine to helping create metal parts for the aerospace, automotive, and energy industries, immigrant workers play critical roles in businesses and local communities all over the nation. And these workers will be key to our continued prosperity and growth, experts and observers say.
In Ohio, Beth Casella says that immigrant workers have been essential to FC Industries, a metal manufacturing business founded by her grandfather. Roughly ten percent of Casella’s 300-strong workforce is foreign-born, and they work in unison to create “everything from high-tech centrifuges to La-Z-Boy recliner frames,” NPR reports in an article titled, “Without immigrants, America’s job growth would have stalled.” Casella is also doing more than just acknowledging her work force, she’s fully leaning in:
“We’ve always prided ourselves on being very diverse,” Casella says. “Three of my grandparents were immigrants.”
The company has partnered with a local refugee resettlement agency to help recruit workers. Bilingual employees are paid extra to act as translators, and the company is setting up an English class. It’s not altruism, Casella says. Just good business.
“We want good workers,” she says. “We want people who can grow here and grow us to the next level. And we’re open to looking wherever that could be.”
In an opinion piece published at WHYY, “Immigrants are essential to Philadelphia’s economic growth and prosperity,” Welcoming Center President Anuj Gupta and Wharton School professor Zeke Hernandez write that immigrants are natural-born entrepreneurs who are 80% more likely to create a business than U.S.-born Americans. Not only are they creating jobs for themselves and others (including folks born here), they are helping improve communities by revitalizing neighborhood corridors, the authors write. And, let’s not forget all that tasty new cuisine:
Locally, one industry that exemplifies how that creativity benefits all of us, is Philly’s food scene. In a recent Wall Street Journal article praising the virtues of making Philadelphia a destination for those looking for a getaway, the majority of dining recommendations were all immigrant-driven. From the vibrant outdoor ethnic pop-up markets in FDR Park to the revitalization experienced by the Italian Market through Vietnamese, Mexican and Cambodian entrepreneurs to the dine-around-the-world-like blocks in the Northeast, Philly has become an internationally renowned dining destination because of immigrant entrepreneurs. Their creativity is reflected in the delicious plates they serve.
Immigration is also key to our continued growth and will be essential in filling the nearly nine million jobs that are currently open, economic experts say. “We have a lot of jobs but not enough workers to fill them,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a July report. “If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have millions of open jobs.” In fact, NPR reports that the “broader data shows that immigrants are not displacing native workers, but rather filling a hole that’s been created by retiring baby boomers. Were it not for immigration, job growth likely would have stalled.”
Omaha World-Herald reports that in Nebraska, voices from ranging from business to faith groups have come together to form a historic coalition urging common sense federal reforms to help combat worker shortages and other declines “also threatening services important to all Nebraskans”:
“Nebraska faces a need for more working people to keep the basic systems running that we rely on, from health care and aging care to construction, maintenance and repair,” Denise Bowyer of Omaha Together One Community, a 30-year-old organization made up of community and faith institutions, said during a Wednesday rally outside the State Capitol. “We all see the workforce strain, the help wanted signs and the risk that good operations will close because they simply can’t find enough people.”
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Laura Field, executive vice president of the Nebraska Cattlemen, said there are “gaping holes” in the labor force across the beef production process, threatening livelihoods in one of the state’s biggest industries. But the federal visa programs that can help meet the demand are filled with red tape, she said, and provide only temporary help.
Despite the groundbreaking nature of this coalition – the Nebraska Alliance for Thriving Communities “represents the largest and broadest pro-immigration organization ever put together in the state,” Omaha World-Herald said – Nebraska also offers insight into the self-inflicting harms of restrictive policies. In Fremont, immigrant workers are critical to the town’s three meatpacking plants, “especially after Costco opened a huge rotisserie chicken facility in 2019.” It’s not just in Nebraska, either. Immigrants represent almost half of all meatpacking plant workers nationwide. But for many years, Fremont has also had policy on the books discouraging undocumented workers from renting within the city limits.
“We need these people,” Fremont City council president Mark Jensen stated to the Omaha World-Herald. “We need this work done. This is what feeds the nation and the world.”
Nationally, we also know that the robust contributions of immigrant-led households help sustain programs like Medicare and Social Security, fund our public schools, libraries, and police departments, and boost our overall economy. “Analysis of the 2021 American Community Survey shows that immigrant-led households paid $524.7 billion in total taxes in 2021, a slight increase since 2019,” Immigration Impact said last year. More recent research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy revealed that undocumented immigrants are also massive contributors, paying an astounding $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022.
America’s Voice has previously noted the roles that immigrant workers play in other industries as well. In Dallas, nurse practitioner Maria Mosomi exemplifies the crucial role that immigrants play in health care. Nationwide, one in six registered nurses is foreign-born, and as a major nursing shortage threatens patients and clinics like, it’s immigrant workers who can help fill these gaps. Mosomi certainly is doing her part. She comes from a family of nurses, and now in her own capacity runs a clinic that treats hundreds of patients with mental illness and other health issues.
“What you see with a lot of immigrant children is tenacity,” Mosomi said in The Dallas Morning News, “because they are the ones closing the gaps between two worlds.”
RELATED: Dallas Immigrants Paid Nearly One Billion In Local and State Taxes in 2022, Research Finds
