I get asked fairly regularly about NRCA's position on immigration policy, certainly one of the most emotional issues the U.S. is facing these days. It's emotional because it's personal, and it affects our industry and national employment picture.
NRCA's position is based on three key elements.
First, we believe our borders should be secure, as an absolute. No one wants to see people enter the U.S. illegally; it distorts fair market practices and provides rewards for people who break the law.
Second, we believe there should be reasonable access to workers who enter the U.S. legally, provided our industry's jobs cannot be met by U.S. workers. We get accused in the media of wanting to hire "cheap labor," but that misses the point. The point is we need to be able to hire workers who are willing to work for a fair price. Solving a labor problem is the issue, not trying to drive wages down.
Third, we believe there must be a reasonable accommodation made for the 11 million or so people who currently live in the U.S. illegally. It is just not possible to suppose we could deport them all. For one thing, our jails simply couldn't handle the number of people who would have to be detained. Even more important, U.S. citizens wouldn't stand for the type of police effort that would be required to try to identify and take into custody millions of people.
Recently, the bipartisan Gang of Eight U.S. senators crafted legislation to address these—and other—immigration policy matters. We think the legislation they developed is a step in the right direction, but we are concerned it fails to meet some of our objectives. For example, a relatively small cap on the number of "temporary workers" allowed in the construction industry essentially will exclude our industry from the program. And there has been discussion about what the wage rates ought to be for construction workers in the U.S. on temporary worker visas. Far better, we think, to let the marketplace determine wage rates.
Most NRCA members I speak with would welcome—embrace, even—the opportunity to offer jobs to qualified U.S. workers. But we face a basic and significant demographic problem: There just aren't enough workers entering the work force who are willing to meet the demands of the jobs our industry offers.
So we support a national policy that would welcome those who want to work in our industry—with appropriate limits—and a policy that would allow people who are in the U.S. illegally to emerge from the shadows through a vigorous and well-documented process. We welcome your thoughts as the debate moves forward; the issue is one of the most important ones facing our industry.
Bill Good is NRCA's executive vice president.
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