Immigration Reform
Comprehensive reform of our nation’s immigration laws will enable the lodging industry to meet the increasing demand for employees, while enhancing national security and ensuring all workers are protected by federal labor laws.
Personal service is the lifeblood of the lodging industry; it cannot be automated and it cannot be outsourced. Hiring workers to fill critical service positions will be one of the industry's most urgent issues over the next decade.
Modest economic growth in the lodging sector, which employed 1.8 million hotel property workers in 2007, is expected to result in the need for 300,000 additional workers by 2014 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Due to the lack of available American workers, many vital sectors of the U.S. economy have turned to foreign-born workers to fill persistent job vacancies. The demand for less-skilled labor will continue to grow in the years ahead. According to the Department of Labor, occupations with the largest growth in absolute numbers will be in those categories that require only "short-term on-the-job training" of one month or less.
Meanwhile, the supply of American workers suitable for such work continues to fall because of an aging workforce and rising education levels. The median age of American workers continues to increase as the large "baby boomer" generation begins to near retirement age. Younger and older workers alike are now more educated and seek higher-skilled jobs, as the share of adult American men without a high school diploma has significantly plunged from 53.6 percent in 1960 to 9.0 percent in 1998. Despite these documented demographic trends, U.S. immigration law provides no meaningful legal channels through which low-skilled foreign-born workers can enter the United States to fill the growing gap between our nation's demand and supply for lower-skilled labor.
Our immigration system must be reformed to secure our borders and protect our economic security by creating a guest worker program that:
- Meets the increasing demand for labor,
- Identifies those immigrants already in the country and provides a method for a status adjustment after they are subjected to a rigorous screening process and fined, and
- Allows those who qualify to work in jobs for which Americans cannot be found.
In recent years, hoteliers have sought to attract and retain employees through numerous initiatives. The industry is a leader in both welfare-to-work and school-to-work efforts, and AH&LA has partnered with prominent organizations such as America's Promise, the NAACP, and Esperanza USA to promote careers in lodging. Despite these efforts, the lodging industry faces widespread labor shortages.
Also of concern to the industry are workers who provide employers with false documentation. Every employee is required to provide proof that he or she is legally permitted to work in the United States. Federal law prohibits employers from verifying the validity of these documents if they appear genuine.
In 2004, after intense lobbying by AH&LA and others, and negotiations between the Bush Administration and key U.S. Senators, comprehensive immigration reform was introduced in the Senate. The legislation sought to:
- Enhance border security through physical, electronic and additional staffing
- Create a new electronic employment verification system through which every current and future employee would have to be verified within three years
- Create new temporary guest worker programs
- Establish a system by which current undocumented workers in the U.S. prior to Jan. 1, 2007 could come forward, be identified, screened and permitted to stay on a "Z" Visa
- Increase the number of green cards available and create a points system to award a portion of those green cards
Unfortunately, the measure was unable to overcome the highly politicized atmosphere in Washington and was defeated on a procedural vote.
Comprehensive immigration reform in the 110th Congress was stalled almost from the beginning of the session. In May 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told President Bush that she would not bring the issue to the House floor because she was not guaranteed that it would pass.
As for the current Congress (111th Congress), immigration reform may finally gain floor time for some kind of debate in 2010. President Obama and certain Congressional leaders have stated that they would like a bill before the November 2010 elections. One bill was introduced by House Hispanic Caucus members in December 2009, and is seen as an opening gambit to further action on this important issue later in 2010.
AH&LA has longed pressed for comprehensive immigration reform. Immigrants many times fill jobs that would otherwise remain empty. AH&LA urges Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform, while the association further hopes that this Congress will move this important issue up to the forefront of its legislative calendar.
MYTH: Employers only want immigration so they can access cheap labor.
FACT: Hoteliers in particular value good service and are willing to pay for it. The lodging industry as a whole pays much higher than the minimum wage.
In May 2006, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that the mean wage of a housekeeper is $8.64 per hour, the mean wage for bellmen is $9.31 per hour, while desk clerks are paid a mean wage of $9.33 per hour. In fact, in May 2008 BLS calculated that the average earning of all employees across the hospitality industry was $12.89 per hour. The industry pays good, competitive wages to its employees.
This problem hotels face is not the amount of pay—it’s the amount of people. BLS figures released in December 2005 show while the lodging industry employed almost 1.4 million people in 2004, the agency projected a 16.4 percent growth rate over the next ten years, which would require an additional 300,000 workers by 2014.
Strongly contrasting with this labor demand, domestic labor supply is shrinking. The U.S. Census Bureau notes that the American birthrate has reached historic lows and estimates that it will soon drop below replacement level. Coupled with an aging domestic workforce and higher educational attainment, the current labor shortage will clearly become much more acute unless additional labor is found.
MYTH: A comprehensive approach provides amnesty.
FACT: Amnesty is defined as "a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense." A sensible comprehensive immigration reform proposal has no such condition. Instead, past legislation has considered adding significant fines, background checks and rigorous conditions on those undocumented workers in the country that seek to remain under a reformed system where our borders are secured. While it is impossible to determine exactly how many undocumented workers are working today in the U.S. economy, it is usually accepted that there may be as many as 12 million. While today's unemployment rate is very high, eventually our economy will recover and the long-term projected need for more workers will not diminish. Any new law needs to be in place today to make a difference in the years ahead, as any changes in U.S. immigration law historically occurs over the space of decades, not years.
Legislation that proposes to take 12 million workers out of an economy that has existing labor shortages would be devastating to our nation. It is much more responsible to recognize the presence and work of 12 million people and seeking to protect our nation's economic and national security isn't amnesty, it's common sense.
MYTH: The borders must be secured first.
FACT: No amount of border security will be successful without a rational immigration system. A legal, organized, efficient, and controlled method for workers to enter the United States must be established.
Border enforcement-only strategies have a history of failure. Although the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents tripled between 1993 and 2005, the number of undocumented workers rose from 400,000 to 850,000 per year. A comprehensive approach to reform the entire immigration system will permit scarce border security resources can be focused on keeping those who wish to do us harm out of the country.
For more information, contact AH&LA Senior Vice President for Governmental Affairs Shawn McBurney at 202-289-3123, smcburney@ahla.com.
(Updated January 2010)