Here to Work: Immigrants Growing Houstons Economy [Video]

To complement its native workforce, the United States relies on millions of migrants: naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, and temporary authorized residents, along with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and temporary protected status (TPS) recipients, visa holders, and undocumented laborers. Without these immigrants’ labor, many sectors of the U.S. economy would halt, especially as employers struggle to fill over 8.8 million open jobs and consumers continue to deal with high prices partially due to a lack of available workers.

Despite the evidence of immigrants’ important economic and cultural contributions and the demographic strengths they bring to American society, the issue of authorizing migrant employment remains controversial in the political theater. This question of labor authorization greatly affects the most vulnerable group of migrants — undocumented workers — 1.1 million of whom are married to U.S. citizens and have U.S. citizen children. Pollingshows significant public support for providing this population with work authorization. Thus, despite the …