Michael Clemens writes an op-ed for Foreign Policy about immigration and the necessity for unskilled workers.
In the congressional battle over immigration reform, some of the most heated fighting has centered on employment visas for less-skilled essential workers -- elder-care workers, farmworkers, builders, cleaners, servers, warehousers. In these debates, someone is usually thinking or saying, "If we create visas for less-skilled work, that amounts to saying that U.S. workers are too 'lazy' to do these jobs or 'can't cut it.'"
That's wrong, and it's an undeserved insult to U.S. workers. In fact, the economy's need for essential workers from abroad is a sign of American workers' strength. And if the United States doesn't address this crucial shortage, the reform efforts currently on the table will likely have limited impact on the number of undocumented workers coming into the country.
The bedrock fact is that there aren't enough U.S. workers to do these essential jobs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the United States will need 3 million additional workers over the next decade to fill the least-skilled jobs -- jobs that do not require a high school degree -- in order to achieve projected economic growth. These include jobs in home health, food preparation, freight, child care, cleaning, landscaping, and construction. Over the same period, the total number of U.S. workers entering the labor force at all skill levels, between the ages of 25 and 54, will be 1.7 million. (At younger ages, 24 years and below, the labor force will actually shrink.)