Migrants with pending asylum cases walk near the city’s Migrant Resource Center along San Pedro Avenue.When I was a boy, my dad would often regale me and my brothers with stories about his summer travels to the Midwest to tend the fields as a child migrant worker. He and his eight siblings would join up with other extended family members on farms in Nebraska and Minnesota picking strawberries and other fruit.
My paternal grandparents were among the millions of Mexicans who permanently settled in the U.S. to help stabilize the domestic labor force in the years following World War II. Schooled in Mexico for only six years, my grandpa was eager to take any opportunity at employment, whether it was farm work, shining shoes as a teenager in downtown Laredo or later driving tractor-trailers across the country.
Foreign-born workers are more likely to take jobs in construction, hospitality and manufacturing — precisely the industries native United States residents are running away from. Due in part to the lack of immigration over the past two years, the U.S. is dealing with a massive labor shortage.