From New York to Denver, US cities are seeking migrants for jobs

The metropolis has an unemployment rate rate slightly below the national average and a highly educated populace that shies away from manual labor. While some employers might be able to lure foreign workers through the H1-B visa program, that isn’t an option for cooks and dishwashers.

So instead, Berzins is tapping into a city program to hire asylum seekers — primarily from South and Central America — who have obtained federal work permits. So far, he’s given jobs to about a dozen people at kitchens where the managers speak Spanish.

“It’s really gotten so bad that almost all of these kitchens around Denver are chronically understaffed,” he said. “They try to make college a priority for graduates of Denver public schools. When that happens, those are not your cooks of the future.”

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Denver’s program and similar efforts in places ranging from New York to North Dakota seek to bridge the gap between companies that need workers and migrants who are desperate for paying jobs. Proponents pitch the programs as good for businesses that are struggling to hire, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of migrants who have sought a new life in the US since 2022 and a relief to city and states that busted budgets to feed and shelter them. In short, the goal is to boost local economies and help lower government spending.

‘Radical Centrist’

Berzins, a self-described “radical centrist” who has made campaign donations to both Democrats and Republicans, tries to stay out of the politics of immigration, one of the top issues for swing-state voters in this year’s presidential election.He’s aware of concerns that a wave of newcomers will displace native-born workers, but says he can’t find anyone to fill his kitchen jobs. He knows some people see the migrants as a burden, particularly in so-called sanctuary cities where they were bused, but points out that allowing them to work will reduce dependence on handouts.“You really can’t have it both ways: You can’t complain and say, these guys are a burden on the system, and we’re having to put them in housing and all these things, and then complain when they’re taking a job so that they can pay their own way,” Berzins said. “Pick one or the other.”

Denver’s program seeks to help asylum seekers with English and computer skills, as well as obtaining federal work authorization. Asylum hopefuls generally become eligible for work permits about six months after applying for legal status, though paperwork backlogs can delay the process.

Denver requires at least one person per household to take part in the program if they want to receive services from the city, which has for months been one of the primary destinations for migrants after they reach the southern US border.

In North Dakota, which has the second-lowest US unemployment rate, state officials recently created the Office of Legal Immigration to address widespread worker shortages across industries. In a report released in May, the agency identified recent arrivals with work authorization as a potential resource for local businesses willing to take them on.

It’s in its early days, but the hope is that the agency will be able to advise businesses on navigating the paperwork and helping newcomers acclimate to the sparsely populated state and its frigid winters.

“I summarize the whole thing in six words,” said North Dakota state Senator Tim Mathern, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation last year that created the department. “We need them. They need us.”

Political Tension

Foreign-born workers represent less than 7% of the state’s labor force, compared with the national average of about 19%. Still, the foreign-born population almost tripled between 2010 and 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Much of the inflow has been concentrated in health-care jobs, particularly to address a post-pandemic shortage of nurses. It also helped offset the effect that an aging population has on the labor force, said Erick Garcia Luna, the regional outreach director at the Minneapolis Fed.

Mathern acknowledged some political tension tied to the idea of welcoming asylum seekers to North Dakota, where Republicans have won every presidential contest since 1968. He’s disappointed that the word “Legal” was added to the department’s name during the legislative process, but understands it was an attempt to ward-off criticism. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that migrants are taking jobs from Americans. He and his allies blame his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for not doing enough to slow arrivals to the southern border.

A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, released in April, found that the inflow of immigrants between 2019 and 2022 marginally boosted wages for native-born workers. Other studies have found that immigration tends to put downward pressure on wages, particularly for the least skilled workers. In the first three months of the year, the US approved some 380,000 employment authorizations for asylum seekers, the most in a single quarter since the start of the migrant crisis.

Giovanni Peri, a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis who wrote the NBER paper, said that the US immigration system prioritizes highly-skilled workers, such as doctors or those who work in tech. But the labor shortage is most acute for lower-skilled jobs.

“Construction workers, health-care providers that don’t have a college degree, people in food and in hospitality — there are no real visas for these people to come,” Peri said. “The asylum seeker application is the only way in which these people can get in.”

New York City has seen some 200,000 migrant arrivals since 2022. The state Department of Labor is seeking to connect migrants with work permits to employers open to hiring them. The state has since identified more than 45,000 jobs that asylum seers might apply for, particularly in the food service and hospitality industries.

Advocates for migrants and industry groups say they’ve seen more people with work authorization in recent months, meaning local businesses can put these folks to work.

‘Survival Mode’

At La Colmena, a nonprofit on Staten Island, migrants can obtain safety certification needed for construction and day labor jobs. The organization is also running a pilot program that teaches hospitality skills for hotel work. The American Hotel and Lodging Association, a national interest group, advocates for cutting wait times for work authorization as one way to address worker shortages.

When buses filled with migrants first appeared in cities like New York and Denver two years ago, the underground economies of those cities were saturated with would-be day laborers, as well as delivery and restaurant workers. Now, the focus is on getting them into the formal economy.

Denver’s WorkReady program has 350 people enrolled. The city has spent $74 million on the emergency response to migrants, including about $90 a person a day in shelters, and the thinking is that helping people land above-the-table work will lessen costs overall. So far, more than 100 employers have expressed interest in tapping into eligible workers, according to Jon Ewing, a city spokesperson.

“The obstacle is getting them out of survival mode because they’ve been in shelter forever and they’re like, ‘We’ll do anything for money,’” Ewing said. “And we’re like, ‘No, no, we want to know what you want to do for the rest of your life.’”