By Kristina Cooke and Howard Schneider
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) – In a noisy factory in Columbus, Ohio, union apprentice Jorge Herrera acted quickly as he assembled ventilation ducts to be used in the construction of a large automobile factory on the outskirts of the city.
The 27-year-old asylum seeker from Nicaragua, who had welding experience in his home country, crossed the US-Mexico border two years ago. He struggled with unstable jobs before being hired by the metalworkers union this year despite speaking little English, having passed the entrance test with the help of a translation app.
He works alongside Sofia Mattern Mondragon, a 22-year-old Mexican-American worker who grew up in the United States. She is the only other person who speaks Spanish on the floor, but said she sometimes has trouble translating the more technical metalworking terms.
A few machines away, Tim Lyman, 60, said, amid the hammering of ductwork and the clang of metal saws, that while communication can be tricky, “if they want to learn, I’ll teach them.”
The arrival of a record number of migrants at the US-Mexico border has posed a political problem for US President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election in November, against former President Donald Trump, who made a crackdown on immigration an important issue in your campaign. .
A White House spokesperson said the Biden administration asked Congress to pass bipartisan immigration reform legislation that was thwarted by Republicans. It also accelerated the processing of work permits and created new legal pathways through which hundreds of thousands of migrants were immediately eligible to apply for permits.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called these efforts taking jobs away from Americans.
But in Columbus, local union workers have welcomed an extra hand of migrants and refugees with work permits, union officials say, amid a construction labor shortage.
Helping immigrant communities access workers to hire has been among the top three requests the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has received from local businesses in recent years, said Kelly Fuller, vice president of talent and workforce development. of the camera.
Nationally, the increase in the number of available workers between 2021 and 2023 was the fastest two-year jump this century, with about half the growth coming from people born elsewhere, and U.S. Federal Reserve officials recently increased their their estimates of economic growth to take into account increased immigration.
Several European countries, such as Spain, are also experiencing growth in their economies, fueled by migrant labor.
In the U.S., the expansion of the workforce has kept the economy growing and consumer spending rising without further increasing inflation, said Brookings Institution economist Tara Watson.
Immigration is bolstering a U.S. workforce that would otherwise be in decline as the baby boomer generation retires, she added. “And especially in some fields, we have long-term structural needs that Americans are simply not going to meet,” Watson said, pointing to the shortage of home health aides and other direct care professionals.
‘FIELD OF DREAMS’
Around Columbus, major construction projects abound, including for Intel chip factories that President Joe Biden called “literally a field of dreams” in his 2023 State of the Union address. Columbus is among the fastest-growing cities in the United States, with factories and warehouses spread across its perimeter.
But with a shortage of skilled labor, unions are discussing how to reach and retain people like Herrera, including by partnering bilingual workers with new hires. The unions distributed flyers about their apprenticeship programs in Spanish and other languages, said Dorsey Hager, a union official who sits on the Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Council.
Herrera discovered the opportunity after stopping by the factory and asking if they had work.
First-year sheet metal apprentices earn $20.58 an hour plus benefits, according to a union brochure. The salary after completing the four-year apprenticeship is about $36 per hour.
“It’s a good thing in the long run,” Herrera said.
He regularly sends money to Nicaragua, where his wife and two children still live. He left because of political violence, he said, and hopes to bring his family to the United States if he is granted asylum.
Columbus is becoming an increasingly popular destination for migrants. More than 9,000 immigrants had a Columbus address in new immigration court filings in fiscal year 2023, a 350 percent increase from fiscal year 2019, according to immigration court data made available by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Overall in Ohio, since the start of fiscal year 2024, the Biden administration has issued about 16,300 work permits to asylum seekers and certain people granted humanitarian parole, including under the new legal pathways, a Department official said. of Homeland Security. Approximately 3,700 more licenses were granted to applicants for Temporary Protected Status.
‘HELP EACH OTHER’
In central Ohio, advocates Claudia Cortez-Reinhardt and Isbel Alvarado helped unions connect with dozens of immigrant workers. In city halls, Cortez-Reinhardt said, workers get excited when they hear about the opportunity for a secure income along with education and health benefits.
Even with work permits, many new immigrants face language and transportation barriers in the car-dependent city of Columbus.
One of the sheet metal apprentices they helped, Ronal Pinto, 45, worked as a mechanical engineer at an aluminum sheet factory in Venezuela.
He fled his home country for Chile, he said, but after four years he and his wife decided to go to the U.S. to seek asylum there.
They settled in Columbus, where he had Venezuelan friends who had arrived earlier. The first two years were difficult, he said, with a series of low-paying, temporary jobs. Now, he feels like he’s done it.
He lives with his wife, young son, in-laws and sister-in-law in a small house, a 45-minute drive from the construction site where he works.
On Saturdays, Pinto attends English classes at a nearby college. He’s far from fluent, he said, but he’s working hard to improve. Some of his co-workers are also trying to learn some Spanish to communicate with him, he said.
In the city, he noticed more Venezuelans and is happy to be able to reach out to newcomers, including informing them about apprenticeship programs.
“We help each other. At least we Venezuelans have always been like this,” said Pinto.
(Reporting by Kristina Cooke in Columbus Ohio and Howard Schneider in Washington, DC; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington, DC; Editing by Mary Milliken and Aurora Ellis)
