New NPG Paper Sheds Light on Hotel Industry’s Not-So-Secret Reliance on Illegal Immigration
- NPG
- April 25, 2024
- Press Releases
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A Deep Dive into the Hotel Industry’s Reliance on Immigrant Labor
Alexandria, VA – [April 25, 2024] – In the third installment of its special series on industries that benefit from illegal immigration, Negative Population Growth (NPG) has released a compelling paper authored by Edwin S. Rubenstein titled Hotels Say They Can’t Find US-Born Workers; Statistics Show They Don’t Try Hard Enough.
The author exposes the stark numbers within the hotel industry workforce with a bold statement early in the paper: “Immigrants make up 31% of the industry’s workforce, although they make up just over 13% of the US population,” Rubenstein writes, offering a nuanced perspective on the employment dynamics within this crucial sector. With nearly 15 million Americans employed in tourism and hospitality, this text invites a critical examination of the hiring tendencies and their broader socioeconomic consequences.
Rubenstein also tackles the H-2B visa program, noting: “The H-2B visa program is controversial – and for good reason. Current visa rules make it easy for employers to ‘game the system’ and bypass US-born workers willing and able to fill seasonal jobs.” This examination raises significant questions regarding the actual beneficiaries of the prevailing system and its impact on American-born workers.
The author engages readers with a “myths vs. facts” approach and goes deeper into the issues of skewed hiring practices, dissecting the rationale behind the apparent preference for immigrant workers when he states, “Employers are under pressure to use E-Verify… Many hotels steer clear of the program, because if they learn their workers have presented false papers, they would be obligated to fire them.”
Rubenstein also stresses the historical context, noting: “The 1986 immigration law – AKA the Reagan Amnesty – was the first bill to prohibit the employment of illegal immigrants.” He highlights a reversal in anticipated outcomes, which suggests that immigrant workers tend to be favored because they are generally “cheaper and more easily abused than native-born workers.”
The paper concludes with a potent revelation about unauthorized labor: “A disproportionately high share of unskilled hotel employees is not authorized to work in the US. Hotels are also among the most intensive users of H-2B temporary work visas.”
The publication of this paper marks an essential contribution to the discourse on immigration, labor practices, and their intersection within the hotel industry. Negative Population Growth continues to shape the conversation on immigration-driven population growth with this revealing look at one of America’s largest employment sectors.
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