Little Rock business and education leaders gathered at City Hall on Monday to talk about immigration issues on a local level with a focus on jobs.
The meeting, led by Mayor Mark Stodola, gathered representatives from the largest employers in central Arkansas, the city’s educational and medical institutions, and other city leaders to talk about what has been working in terms of immigration law and what still needs to be done.
Almost all the participants said their organization or company would directly benefit from immigration policy change, whether that meant more access to unskilled laborers or easier access to visas for highly skilled workers, such as engineers or doctors.
“I asked people to raise their hands if they’d talked to their congressmen about the need for immigration reform,” said Stodola, who is also co-chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Comprehensive Immigration Reform task force.
“Nearly every hand in the room went up. That’s a sign to me that this is an issue we must discuss and that moving swiftly would be a benefit to our local economy on many levels.”
The meeting Monday was part of a larger effort by the the nonprofit bipartisan group Business Forward. The group, which says it focuses on helping business leaders advise policymakers on ways to create jobs and accelerate economic recovery, has facilitated immigration policy meetings in cities across the country over the past few months.
Several participants at Monday’s Little Rock meeting said one of the biggest misunderstandings involving immigration policy was thinking that it addresses only illegal immigration issues.
“It’s all about educating the public, but we need to start by educating our public officials,” said Zulma Toro, provost of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “The baby boomers are retiring, and we don’t have enough candidates in our specialized fields like engineering or physics to replace those outgoing professors. Higher education will be impacted greatly if immigration reform is not approved.”
Jay Chesshir, chief executive officer and executive director of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, gave another example. He said representatives from Lexicon Inc. in Little Rock have said they have 80 sheet metal jobs available but want to make sure to give them to people who will pass a drug test and will show up to work.
He said company representatives said they’ve had a lot of success training Hispanic immigrants for the positions.
“They have the jobs, but it’s a case of not having the right people with the right skill sets, and the willingness to show up for work, to fill them,” he said.
Chesshir said Little Rock and Arkansas have become a microcosm of larger immigration issues nationwide. He said the sting of immigration policy has been felt in all economic arenas, including agriculture and timber, health and technology fields.
According to research by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, Arkansas is the fourth fastest-growing state for immigrant populations, with an 82 percent increase in its immigrant population from about 73,000 to 133,000 people between 2000 and 2010.
According to the study, 17 percent, or 22,610, of those immigrants live in Pulaski County. About 44 percent, or 58,520, lived in Washington, Benton and Sebastian counties; and 39 percent, or 51,870, lived in smaller cities or rural areas throughout the state.
The study does not include the number of skilled workers in that tally or the level of education or skill obtained by the overall population.
Stodola said the need for skilled workers and work visa issues make up a large part of the need for immigration policy change.
He said a representative of Welspun Corp. Ltd. said Monday that the company is losing 15 engineers because of expiring work visas and stands to lose 20 more next year.
“The last time a comprehensive immigration reform was done was 1986,” Stodola said. “Mark Zuckerberg was 2 years old. … Technology has moved quickly since then, and immigration reform has not. The skills, the jobs, the educational opportunities all moved forward, but reform has not.”
Toro and Stodola held a news conference last week to urge the state’s congressional delegation to support an immigration bill in the U.S. Senate that would create stricter border-security standards and a path to citizenship for those people illegally in the country. The bill would also address educational and work visa requirements and limits.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/18/2013