President Joe Biden’s plan for greening the economy relies on a simple pitch: It will create good-paying jobs for Americans.
The problem is there might not be enough Americans to fill them. That reality is pressuring the Biden administration to wrestle with the nation’s immigration system to avoid squandering its biggest legislative achievements.
“There’s no question that addressing our broken immigration system in America would address many workforce shortages,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), a vocal proponent of immigration overhaul, told POLITICO. “There’s employment needed right now. Jobs are available.”
Congress has put a record amount of money behind boosting jobs the U.S. workforce presently does not appear equipped to fulfill. That includes $369 billion in climate incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, $550 billion in new money through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act’s $52 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing.
Lawmakers, former administration officials, clean energy and labor advocates said immigration fixes are needed if the administration wants to ensure its biggest victories don’t go to waste — and that the nation can fight climate change, add jobs and beat geopolitical rivals like China in the global marketplace. Those changes include raising annual visa caps for highly skilled workers needed to grow the next wave of U.S. industry and securing ironclad work protections for people in the country on a temporary basis, they said. It’s the key to building a workforce needed to design, manufacture and install millions of new appliances, solar panels and electric vehicles.
The high stakes for Biden’s jobs agenda, which will be a pillar of his likely reelection message next year, may force the White House to finally grapple with an issue it’s mostly kept on the back burner.
President Donald Trump cut legal immigration in half over his four years in office through a mix of executive orders that halted immigration from Muslim countries and limited the ability of people seeking to join their spouses and other family members in the U.S. As Republicans have attacked Biden over the migrant crisis at the southern border, his administration has kept some of his predecessor’s immigration policies in place. And the White House is wary about enabling additional GOP attacks that would likely ignore the economic rationale for any easing of legal migration and simply hammer Biden as “soft” on immigration.
In addition, calling for foreign-born workers would appear at odds with Biden’s blue-collar, American-made green revolution.
Last decade saw the U.S. population grow at its slowest rate since the Great Depression, yet the White House remains somewhat hesitant to take further executive action or use its bully pulpit on immigration, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking. But they said the administration recognizes immigration tweaks could break a labor shortage raising the price of goods through supply chain constraints, slowing clean energy projects and preventing highly skilled people from helping American businesses lead in emerging global industries.
One former administration official warned that policymakers must soon address the reality of global competition for high-skilled talent.
“If in the long term we neglect the human capital equation here, to some extent these efforts to change the face of industrial policy in the United States are not going to be as successful as they should be,” said Amy Nice, distinguished immigration fellow and visiting scholar at Cornell Law, who until January led STEM immigration policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “And some measures will be in vain.”
The White House has been hearing from senior officials, including at least one Cabinet secretary, about the need for administrative actions on immigration — raising caps on certain visa categories, filling country quotas — to help alleviate the pressure on the workforce and increase the country’s labor supply, according to a senior administration official not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Biden, some officials and lawmakers have asserted, could also increase staff and other resources to help speed up visa processing and cut through a massive backlog that has left potential workers in limbo for months, years, and in some cases, decades.
But for now, the administration seems more inclined to allow Congress to work on the issue.
“I don’t think politics is the main concern. It’s just inertia and the hope that something more substantial could be done through legislation,” said one senior administration official who did not want to be named in order to speak freely.
A White House official defended the administration’s record on immigration, noting Biden sent a framework for comprehensive immigration reform to Congress as one of his first presidential actions. The measure has yet to gain traction.
The White House official noted the administration is moving to address immediate clean energy workforce needs in the construction, electrification and manufacturing fields, where a shortage of qualified people threatens to slow deployment of climate-fighting innovations Biden needs to meet his climate goals.
The official said the administration has worked with organizations to pair skilled refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine with trade union apprenticeship programs. The official said the administration’s focus remains on retraining people through creating training pipelines for electricians, broadband installers and construction workers. The official added that expanding union participation would ensure stronger labor supply by reducing turnover through improved job quality, safety and wages.
“I don’t think we’ve run out of people to do these kinds of jobs,” the official said.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an interview that the White House is “certainly aware that the low unemployment rate can be an obstacle” to the economy and the laws it has passed, but that the administration “hasn’t come to the Hill with a real workforce focus” on immigration.
The stakes are clear for sectors pivotal to building and operating the infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy projects Biden and Democrats have promised. The 57,000 foreign-born workers currently in the electrical and electronics engineering field comprise nearly 27 percent that sector’s workforce, while the 686,000 foreign-born construction laborers account for 38 percent of the nation’s total, according to a New American Economy analysis of Census data. Most foreign-born construction laborers are undocumented immigrants, according to the Center for American Progress, making up nearly one-quarter of the sector’s national workforce.
“My largest worry about the American economy right now is the workforce worry,” Kaine said.
The White House has seemed more comfortable taking executive steps, Kaine said, such as expanding a humanitarian parole program for migrants that also comes with a two-year work authorization. It also has pledged to step up enforcement against employers that exploit undocumented workers, which advocates contend will help keep those people in the workforce.
But conversations are also brewing again on Capitol Hill about more “discreet” immigration bills. Kaine said he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have discussed legislation to help support people with Temporary Protected Status, a Department of Homeland Security designation for people who have fled natural disasters, armed conflict or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in their home country.
Immigration restrictions are even hindering oil and gas companies right now, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), said in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last month.
“The permits that ranchers use, agriculture, the permits that hospitality use — those same immigration permits are not the ones that are needed for people to have temporary work visas in the oil and gas sector,” he said. “You ain’t unleashing a thing unless you do something about immigration reform."
Others have suggested that in addition to its inability to reach a deal to update the nation’s outdated immigration system, Congress needs to do a better job at retaining the immigrants who specifically come to the U.S. to earn degrees.
The U.S. for years has struggled to develop advanced STEM degree holders, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in these fields. It has fewer native-born advanced STEM degree recipients than countries like China, raising national security concerns from top officials. The Biden administration has tried to break that logjam, in part by allowing international STEM students to stay on student visas and work for up to three years in the U.S. post-graduation.
“Why educate some of these folks in American schools … and then lose some of our best and brightest talent just because our system is super outdated?” said Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub.
And the demand for high-skilled workers far outweighs the nation’s immigration caps, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, head of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Congress limited employment-based green cards and H-1B visas offering temporary residency to skilled workers to 140,000 and 85,000 per year, respectively.
Foreign nationals dominate the exact fields the U.S. needs to grow its clean energy and manufacturing base. Nearly three-quarters of all full-time graduate students at U.S. universities pursuing electrical engineering, computer and information science, and industrial and manufacturing engineering degrees are foreign-born, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, an innovation, trade and immigration think tank. The same is true for more than half seeking mechanical engineering and agricultural economics, mathematics, chemical engineering, metallurgical and materials engineering and materials sciences degrees.
Subtle changes, like requiring more evidence and interviews, under the Trump administration worsened already-common backlogs. Processing at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is mainly paper based, not electronic, shuttered during the pandemic — it remains plagued by staff and funding shortages.
To the extent that the green energy transition is a race for a global market and influence, the U.S. immigration system is like a boulder in its shoe.
“Canada literally places billboards in Washington state saying, ‘Come here,’” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior advisor for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Our ability to succeed in these big goals relies on people being able to do the work to meet those goals.”
BEIJING — After a decade in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s shadow, Li Keqiang is taking his final bow as the country’s premier, marking a shift away from the skilled technocrats who have helped steer the world’s second-biggest economy in favor of officials known mainly for their unquestioned loyalty to China’s most powerful leader in recent history.
After exiting the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee in October — despite being below retirement age — Li’s last major task was delivering the state of the nation address to the rubber-stamp parliament on Monday. The report sought to reassure citizens of the resiliency of the Chinese economy, but contained little that was new.
Once seen as a potential top leader, Li was increasingly sidelined as Xi accumulated ever-greater powers and elevated the military and security services in aid of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Li’s lack of visibility sometimes made it difficult to remember he was technically ranked No. 2 in party.
Li “was a premier largely kept out of the limelight by order of the boss,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies and a longtime observer of Chinese politics.
In an era where personal loyalty trumps all, the fact that Li wasn’t seen purely as a Xi loyalist may end up being “the main reason why he will be remembered fondly,” Tsang said.
For most of his career, Li was known as a cautious, capable and highly intelligent bureaucrat who rose through, and was bound by, a consensus-oriented Communist Party that reflexively stifles dissent.
As governor and then party secretary of the densely populated agricultural province of Henan in the 1990s, Li squelched reporting on an AIDS outbreak tied to illegal blood-buying rings that pooled plasma and reinjected it into donors after removing the blood products, allegedly with the collusion of local officials.
While Li was not in office when the scandal broke, his administration worked to quiet it up, prevented victims from seeking redress and harassed private citizens working on behalf of orphans and others affected.
But Li also cut a modestly different profile, an English speaker from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas. Introduced to politics during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, he made it into prestigious Peking University, where he studied law and economics, on his own merits rather than through political connections.
After graduation, Li went to work at the Communist Youth League, an organization that grooms university students for party roles, then headed by future president and party leader Hu Jintao. Higher office soon followed.
Among the largely faceless ranks of Chinese bureaucrats, Li managed to show an unusually candid streak. In a U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Li is quoted telling diplomats that Chinese economic growth statistics were “man-made,” and saying he looked instead to electricity demand, rail cargo traffic, and lending as more accurate indicators.
Though no populist, in his speeches and public appearances, Li was practically typhonic compared to the typically languorous Xi.
Yet, he largely failed to make effective use of the platforms he was given, unlike his immediate predecessors. At his sole annual news conference on the closing day of each congressional annual session, Li used up most of his time repeating talks points and reciting statistics. Throughout the upheavals of China’s three-year battle against Covid-19, Li was practically invisible.
Li, who hailed from humble backgrounds, had been seen as Hu’s preferred successor as president. But the need to balance party factions prompted the leadership to choose Xi, the son of a former vice premier and party elder, as the consensus candidate.
The two never formed anything like the partnership that characterized Hu’s relationship with his premier, Wen Jiabao — or Mao Zedong’s with the redoubtable Zhou Enlai — although Li and Xi never openly disagreed over fundamentals.
“Xi is not the first among equals, but rather is way above equal,” said Cheng Li, an expert on the Chinese leadership at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, Li was a “team player” who put party unity foremost, he said.
Meanwhile, Li’s authority was being gradually shrunk, beginning with a reorganization of offices in 2018. While some may have wished Li had been more “influential or decisive,” the ground was crumbling under his feet as Xi shifted more of the powers of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, to party institutions, Cheng Li said. That shift to expanded party control is expected to continue at the current congress meeting on an even greater scale.
At the same time, Xi appeared to favor trusted long-time brothers-in-arms such as economic adviser Liu He and head of the legislature Li Zhanshu, over Li, leaving him with little visibility or influence
His departure leaves major questions about the future of the private sector that Xi has been reining in, along with wider economic reforms championed by Li and his cohort. His expected replacement, Li Qiang, is a crony of Xi’s from his days in provincial government, best known for his ruthless implementation of last spring’s monthslong Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai.
“Li Keqiang has been associated with a more economics-focused take on governance, which contrasts strongly with the ideological tone that Xi has brought to politics,” said Rana Mitter of Oxford University.
“Li may be the last premier of his type, at least for a while,” Mitter said.
Li may be remembered less for what he achieved than for the fact that he was the last of the technocrats to serve at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, said Carl Minzner, an expert on Chinese law and governance at New York’s Fordham University and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Politically, Xi’s authoritarian tendencies risk a return to Mao-era practices where elite politics become “yet more byzantine, vicious, and unstable,” Minzner said.
Li’s departure “marks the end of an era in which expertise and performance, rather than political loyalty to Xi himself, was the primary career criterion for ambitious officials seeking to rise up to higher office,” he said.
SELMA, Ala. — When President Joe Biden landed here Sunday, he met a city frozen in time.
Brick buildings, aging and largely untouched since the days its inhabitants helped ignite the country’s civil rights movement nearly six decades ago, line the streets. Empty storefronts dot both sides of the main drag — Broad Street — where the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge is located. Typically, the city is quiet. But on the first weekend of every March, the streets come alive.
On Sunday, hours before Biden stepped foot on the bridge, white vendor tents covered almost every corner, many selling T-shirts emblazoned with the face of the late Rep. John Lewis or a $13 plate of fried fish. Grassroots organizers held programs on reparations and voting rights.
Biden arrived to recognize “Bloody Sunday.” The 600-person demonstration in Selma on March 7, 1965, ended with state troopers beating protesters, and it ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. Biden's visit was part of both a somber commemoration and a joyful celebration. A reminder of Black excellence and strength — and of the terrors of the Jim Crow era. For decades, nearly every president has visited Selma during this weekend.
As Biden’s motorcade arrived on the scene, the thousands of spectators hemmed in on Broad Street applauded. They cheered as the president made his way to the riser to join the other dignitaries, including numerous members of Congress and the Revs. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Will Barber.
Speaking just at the base of the bridge, Biden pressed for the passage of voting rights legislation. He also reiterated his call for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster to help clear the way for Congress to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
“Selma is a reckoning. The right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty," Biden told the crowd, generating applause. "With it, anything’s possible. Without it, without that right, nothing is possible. And this fundamental right remains under assault. I will not let the filibuster obstruct the sacred right to vote.”
Biden also hit Republican efforts to curtail the teaching of certain aspects of Black history.
“No matter how hard some people try, we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know but not what we should know,” he said. “We should learn everything — the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation. And everyone should know the truth of Selma.”
Local residents — and those that make the sojourn every year — welcomed the attention. Everyone here noted the anniversary is the city’s only notable event.
“The country sees Selma as purely a historic place, as a monument,” Oni Scott, a college student visiting from New York, told POLITICO. “I feel like a lot of people do come down here for Jubilee and for this weekend. But then every other time I come here, it's completely empty.”
But every year, residents hope the national attention will last beyond the weekend. They said this year in particular, Biden has the opportunity to help a city that has long struggled to revitalize.
On the stage and ahead of Biden’s remarks, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), whose district includes Selma, thanked the president for his work leading to last year’s passage of the infrastructure bill and, before that, the American Rescue Plan. But she added it was important to “leverage these opportunities to make a difference for all of Selma. We cannot have an uneven recovery. It’s not fair. And it’s not right. “
Fewer than 18,000 people are estimated to live in Selma, which is 84 percent Black, according to the 2020 census. Nearly one-third of the population live below the poverty line, although local leaders expect it may now be far more after a tornado with 130 mph winds ripped through the city in January.
“We need your help. We need everything in Selma,” Sewell said.
Joann Bland, a “Bloody Sunday” survivor who helped lead a movement to build Foot Soldiers Park, a standing monument to the site where protestors gathered before the march, said she had wanted Biden to further invest in the city and help rebuild a community devastated by a tornado that deepened decadesold infrastructure problems.
“I want him to say he put in some resources in Selma. I want him to say they're not putting a Band-Aid on Selma, give me $2 and think you gave me something,” Bland said before Biden’s speech, at an unveiling event for a park mural. “I want him to say he's going to do something concrete here in Selma to help with our rebuild. He said ‘build back better.’ Then he needs to put the resources here to do that.”
The frustration of locals, and national advocates who visited, also centered on the lack of national movement on voting rights even though Democrats successfully pushed through the Inflation Reduction Act and a gun safety bill.
Cliff Albright, the co-founder of the voting rights group Black Voters Matter and who visited Selma for the weekend, said while Black voters understand Biden’s predicament of fighting a split Congress, it won’t stop them from pushing him more.
“When we have friends — people that we expect more of, people that we have given power to — part of our strategy has got to be to hold them accountable. That's not hate,” he told POLITICO. “So when he's falling short, we've got to collectively call it out.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who joined Biden in Selma for the commemoration, said the president has an opportunity to prove his commitment to the Black community that helped put him in the White House.
“Some have called Selma a sacred land. I think it is,” she said in an interview before Biden’s arrival. “The president is in support of infrastructure transformation. This could be an example of that, an example of honoring the history of the civil rights movement right here in Selma, because it is a city that has not changed.”
Albright sees it similarly. He fears that if Biden fails to rise to the “next level,” it could hurt Black voter turnout in 2024.
It’s been a tension felt since Day One inside the Biden White House, where aides have privately expressed frustration over the suggestion the president isn’t doing enough for the Black community. They have pointed to his executive actions on policing and expanded access to voter education.
The president highlighted those actions during his speech and noted the millions of dollars Selma has received through American Rescue Plan funds.
“Silence is complicity and I promise you, my administration will not remain silent,” he told the crowd, adding, “We see you. We’re fighting to make sure no one’s left behind. This is a time of choosing, and we need everybody engaged.”
SELMA, Ala. — President Joe Biden used the searing memories of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” to recommit to a cornerstone of democracy, lionizing a seminal moment from the civil rights movement at a time when he has been unable to push enhanced voting protections through Congress and a conservative Supreme Court has undermined a landmark voting law.
“Selma is a reckoning. The right to vote ... to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it anything’s possible,” Biden told a crowd of more than 1,000 people seated on one side of the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a reputed Ku Klux Klan leader.
“This fundamental right remains under assault. The conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act over the years. Since the 2020 election, a wave of states and dozens and dozens of anti-voting laws fueled by the ‘Big Lie’ and the election deniers now elected to office,” he said.
As a candidate in 2020, Biden promised to pursue sweeping legislation to bolster protection of voting rights. Two years ago, his 2021 legislation, named after civil right leader John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman, included provisions to restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to bankroll political causes anonymously.
It passed the then-Democratic-controlled House, but it failed to draw the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate even under control of Biden’s party. With Republicans now in control of the House, passage of such legislation is highly unlikely.
“We know we must get the votes in Congress,” Biden said, but there seems no viable path right now.
The visit to Selma was a chance for Biden to speak directly to the current generation of civil rights activists. Many feel let down because of the lack of progress on voting rights and they are eager to see his administration keep the issue in the spotlight.
Few moments have had as lasting importance to the civil rights movement as what happened on March 7, 1965, in Selma and in the weeks that followed.
Some 600 peaceful demonstrators led by Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams had gathered that day, just weeks after the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by an Alabama trooper.
Lewis and the others were brutally beaten by Alabama troopers and sheriff’s deputies as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the start of what was supposed to be a 54-mile walk to the state Capitol in Montgomery as part of a larger effort to register Black voters in the South.
“On this bridge, blood was given to help redeem the soul of America,” Biden said.
The images of the police violence sparked outrage across the country. Days later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. led what became known as the “Turnaround Tuesday” march, in which marchers approached a wall of police at the bridge and prayed before turning back.
President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after “Bloody Sunday,” calling Selma one those rare moments in American history where “history and fate meet at a single time.” On March 21, King began a third march, under federal protection, that grew by thousands by the time they arrived at the state Capitol. Five months later, Johnson signed the bill into law.
This year’s commemoration came as the historic city of roughly 18,000 was still digging out from the aftermath of a January EF-2 tornado that destroyed or damaged thousands of properties in and around Selma. The scars of that storm were still evident Sunday. Blocks from the stage where Biden spoke, houses sat crumbled or without roofs. Orange spray paint marked buildings beyond salvage with instructions to “tear down.”
“We remain Selma strong,” Mayor James Perkins said, adding that “we will build back better.” He thanked Biden for approving a disaster declaration that helped the small city with the cost of debris cleanup and removal.
Before Biden’s visit, the Rev. William Barber II, a co-chair of Poor People’s Campaign, and six other activists wrote Biden and members of Congress to express their frustration with the lack of progress on voting rights legislation. They urged Washington politicians visiting Selma not to sully the memories of Lewis and Williams and other civil rights activists with empty platitudes.
“We’re saying to President Biden, let’s frame this to America as a moral issue, and let’s show how it effects everybody,” Barber said in an interview.
Among those sharing the stage with Biden before the march across the bridge were Barber, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday it was time for the nation to move past celebrity candidates for president in remarks that seemed squarely aimed at former President Donald Trump.
While not referring to Trump by name, Pompeo said on "Fox News Sunday": "The moment for celebrity, the moment for stars, is not with us. It's the moment for America to go back to its conservative founding."
In discussing recent remarks about his ideal choice for president, Pompeo said: "I was talking about the time to elect serious leaders who are thoughtful, who speak about America as the most exceptional nation in the history of civilization. They aren't denigrating it, they are not throwing out whoppers, they're not spending all their time thinking about Twitter. That's what I was speaking to."
Host Shannon Bream pressed Pompeo, saying that his description of who he didn't want in the White House sounded a lot like Trump, his former boss.
"It's not about former President Trump. It's not about President Biden. It's about the American people and getting this right," Pompeo answered, before telling Bream he was not "dodging" her question.
He also said he would decide whether to run or not in "the next couple months."
Pompeo is one of a number of prominent Republicans seen as potential challengers to the former president for the 2024 GOP nomination.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have entered the race, and others, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, are considered possible entrants. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Sunday he would not be entering the race.
Pompeo, who also spoke about current international crises and the origins of Covid-19, did say he thought he could do better as president than recent holders of the nation's highest office when it comes to fiscal policy and government debt.
"I think," he said, "a President Pompeo or any conservative president will do better than not only we did during the four years of the Trump administration, but Barack Obama, George Bush. The list is long, Shannon, of folks who come to Washington on one theory and aren't prepared to stand up and explain to the American people how we're actually going to get that right."
