Immigrant workers vital to business owners
08:21 AM CST on Saturday, December 1, 2007

A recent e-mail that I received from a Tarrant County business owner decried the state of immigration reform in this country. But not for the reasons you might expect.

His concerns are actually quite typical of what many business owners across the country are feeling.

He wrote a very frustrated, plaintive note:

"I only wish the general media was more interested in generating a realistic depiction of the facts in the immigration issue, instead of simply fanning the flames by quoting and interviewing mainly people from the far negative side of the issue. What does it take these days for the real facts to get to the everyday citizen?

If they can't get it from the media, how can we ever fix any problems?"

I've received similar complaints from others who are now coming forward out of concern that the national debate is being driven by fear and politics rather than facts and basic economics.

The Tarrant County businessman, who requested anonymity, says, "The time has come for the media, our government, and the general public to hear from those of us who live the truth every day."

He's a white, conservative Republican who owns a light manufacturing company and employs about 125 people. In the 1990s, he began getting job applicants with Social Security numbers that could not be matched.

Today, he said, the only factory workers he can find have bad numbers.

And yet, "without this work force, we would not remain in business," he writes. "We did not search them out, nor do we intentionally hire them. We simply have to have employees, and we must take what is available to us."

His biggest competitor is now China, and without these immigrant workers, he said his business will die. He values his workers and their hard work and says Congress must enact real reform and not punish business owners in the process.

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, said the story is a common one in the business community. And he heard it repeated over and over again at an immigration summit in Tyler this week organized by the Texas Employers for Immigration Reform, a statewide coalition of businesses,

Until now, many business owners have kept silent in the wake of large-scale federal raids, he said.

"They're concerned about ICE and not raised their profile," he said. "But they've got to get engaged in this process and let their elected officials know."

Otherwise, the Texas economy could be severely crippled over the long term, he said.

Business leaders such as Dennis Nixon, president and CEO of the International Bank of Commerce, have indeed begun to speak out. As chairman of the Alliance for Security and Trade in Laredo, Mr. Nixon developed a white paper to outline the main points of the current immigration issue.

Chief among these: Baby boomers are retiring and the U.S. birth rate is falling. It now stands at 2.1 children per woman and is expected to fall below replacement level by 2015. Mexico's fertility rate is 2.4. America has jobs and needs workers. Those workers will have to come from somewhere else.

The paper also offers such solutions as a guest worker program that allows legalization, and border security measures.

Mr. Nixon recently lamented that the country had switched its focus from terrorism to immigration. The ensuing immigration debate that is polarizing the nation is now a "roller coaster that's going straight down," he said.

Eddie Aldrete, a bank executive in San Antonio who also is a member of the Texas employers coalition, said labor shortages are starting to become apparent – from Idaho to Texas.

"Our economic growth in San Antonio has been stunted by the reluctance of employers to create new jobs because of the insecurity of a labor force," Mr. Aldrete said.

He said he attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., this week between the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security and found a high level of frustration.

"Employers from across the country are as frustrated as we are," he said. "And we fear it's going to get worse before it gets better."
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