Why The U.S. Won’t Put Immigrants To Work

In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which made it extremely difficult to hire people to work without authorization in the U.S. Today the U.S. has more than 9 million open roles and only 5.8 million job seekers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, millions of people are in limbo, waiting to immigrate to the U.S. and even more are likely to come as climate change drives more people to migrate. While immigration alone is unlikely to fix the worker shortage, many advocates think it could help alleviate the labor crisis. Chapters: 00:00 — Introduction 01:44 — Labor shortage 04:18 — Forbidding work 09:24 — Solutions Produced and Edited by: Lindsey Jacobson Animation: Christina Locopo Additional Camera by: Mark Licea, Jack Hillyer Additional Footage: Getty Images, Wikipedia/White House Photographic Collection, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, C-SPAN Additional Sources: White House, Pew Research Center, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Department of State, Council on Foreign Relations, USA.gov, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities