Shortage of foreign workers challenges those hiring in US

Neha Mahajan was a television journalist in India before her husband’s job moved her family to the United States in 2008. She spent years locked out of the labor market, confined by what she calls the “gilded cage” of her immigration status — one that the pandemic placed her back into.

Mahajan started working after an Obama administration rule change in 2015 allowed people on spousal visas to hold jobs, and she took a new job in business development at an immigration law firm early in 2021. But processing delays tied to the pandemic caused her work authorization to expire in July, forcing her to take leave.

“It just gets to you emotionally and drains you out,” said Mahajan, 39, who lives in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Last week, she received approval documents for her renewed work authorization, enabling her to return to the labor force. But a process that should have taken three months stretched to 10. And because her visa is linked to her husband’s, she will need to reapply for authorization again in December when his visa comes up for renewal.

Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers have gone missing from the labor market as the pandemic drags on, leaving holes in white-collar professions and more service-oriented jobs in beach towns and at ski resorts. Newcomers and applicants for temporary visas were initially limited by policy changes under former President Donald Trump, who used a series of executive actions to slow many types of legal immigration. Then pandemicera travel restrictions and bureaucratic backlogs caused immigration to drop precipitously, threatening a long-term loss of talent and economic potential.

Some of those missing would-be employees will probably come and work as travel restrictions lift and as visa processing backlogs clear, as Mahajan’s example suggests. But the recent immigration lost to the pandemic is likely to leave a permanent hole. Goldman Sachs estimated in research this month that the economy was short 700,000 temporary visa holders and permanent immigrant workers, and that perhaps 300,000 of those people would never come to work in the United States.

Employers consistently complain that they are struggling to hire, and job openings exceed the number of people actively looking for work, even though millions fewer people are working compared with just before the pandemic. The slump in immigration is one of the many reasons for the disconnect. Companies dependent on foreign workers have found that waves of infections and processing delays at consulates are keeping would-be employees in their home countries, or stuck in the U.S. but unable to work.

Worker inflows had already slowed sharply before the pandemic, the result of a crackdown by the Trump administration that made it harder for foreign workers, refugees and migrant family members to enter the United States. But the pandemic accelerated that decline: Overall visa issuance dropped by 4.7 million last year.

Many of those visas would have gone to shortterm visitors and tourists — people who likely will come back as travel restrictions lift. But hundreds of thousands of the visas would have gone to workers. Without them, some employers have been left struggling.

The Biden administration lifted a Trump-era pandemic ban on legal immigration in February, and the number of foreign nationals coming into the United States on visas has been recovering this year. Monthly data show a nascent but incomplete rebound.

But some visa categories that weren’t deemed high priority, including many temporary work authorizations, have been waiting long months for approval.

ELIANEL CLINTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES Neha Mahajan started a new job this year, but processing delays linked to the pandemic led to her work authorization expiring in July.