(The Center Square) – A coalition of congressional leaders, Illinois business officials and immigration advocates want to get migrants into the workforce.
Over 13,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Illinois over the past year, many bused from Texas after crossing the southern U.S. border.
U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined a news conference Wednesday hosted by American Business Immigration Coalition Action to urge President Joe Biden to use his existing legal authority to expand work authorizations and help address the labor shortage crisis.
“There are jobs that go vacant because American workers are not taking these jobs,” Durbin said. “These immigrants are ready to step in and take the hardest, dirtiest, roughest jobs imaginable, because they always have.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also have asked the Biden administration to create a state-sponsored parole program to allow asylum seekers to obtain work permits.
The Illinois Restaurant Association reports nationally, the industry is expected to add 1.8 million positions over the next decade, a 14% increase in the industry’s workforce. However, the U.S.-born workforce is expected to grow by just 10% over the same period.
“We believe in a pathway to legalization or an essential worker program for the more than 11 million undocumented individuals that can work, pay taxes, and contribute to the economy and their communities,” said Sam Toia, president of the IRA.
Illinois U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria, said many of the migrants have not been properly processed through legal immigration channels.
“When you allow in four million people under the Biden administration that have come across the border illegally, that is not following the rule of law, then that’s problematic,” LaHood said.
Pritzker estimates the state of Illinois has spent around $250 million of taxpayer funds to support the migrants that have arrived since last August, but have been reimburse only about $38 million from the federal government.
