International Recruitment in Times of High Unemployment

As unemployment rates skyrocket across the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact to local and state economies, it’s a good opportunity to discuss workforce immigration. Workforce immigration has recently come under scrutiny because of the pandemic and the concerns that foreign workers are displacing American workers. This is especially concerning at a time when American workers are out of work in record numbers.

Last week, President Trump released a proclamation on immigration further restricting travel to the United States in an effort to prevent further transmission of COVID-19. This furthered his previous proclamation on the subject issued in May. Luckily, healthcare workers under EB-3 visas are not currently impacted by these restrictions. Cited multiple times in the proclamations, however, is the need to restrict immigration not only for public health needs, but for protection of American workers during this economic downturn.

Critics of workforce immigration are particularly vocal right now, which is why it is extremely important to highlight details of the workforce immigration process, especially for the healthcare sector. In order for an employer to recruit overseas and bring foreign workers to the U.S., they must demonstrate to the U.S. Department of Labor that they cannot fill these open jobs with American workers. In fact, employers must post job openings for a requisite number of days with no qualified applicants; human resources departments must document advertisements for jobs that cannot be filled. Only after U.S. companies can effectively demonstrate that American workers are unavailable to fill open jobs, can they begin the process of recruiting overseas. In fact, the visa fees that employers pay on behalf of their employees are often repurposed as federal grants to assist states with skills training of American workers to strengthen the future workforce in the U.S.

International recruitment is not displacing American jobs; federal laws and regulations are already in place to prevent that from occurring. International recruitment is also not a solution for employers who simply wish to fill any and all jobs with foreign labor. Foreign recruitment is a complementary strategy to existing local and in-state efforts to strengthen and deepen talent pipelines, specifically for a high-demand, high-skill workforce, such as that required in the healthcare industry.