Why doesn’t America legalize Undocumented Immigrants in this Labor Shortage? What are the political and practical considerations. What US Politicians can do to fight the Inflation and Supply Chain issues. Watch our Discussion with an Immigration Attorney Yakov Spektor.

Legalizing for Jobs

Thu, 5/19 1:57PM • 6:58

SPEAKERS

Michael Levitis, Yakov Spektor

Michael Levitis 00:00

Hey, everybody, it’s Michael Levitis here with Yasha Spektor, an immigration attorney. Today, I want to ask Yasha a question that’s relevant to current events to news that everybody cares about the news about inflation going up the cost of everything going up. And today, we’re not gonna talk just about law. We’re gonna talk about as well about politics.

Yakov Spektor 00:26 

Yeah, sure. dangerous topic.

Michael Levitis 00:28

Yeah. But listen, we don’t shy away from controversial topics. That’s what we do here. We touch it all to talk about. Let me ask you, inflation is going up. We know that gas prices gone up. Food prices going up? Partially, from what I understand, it’s because there’s a shortage of workers in America. unemployment is very low, not enough workers to fill all the positions. And that’s why employers are forced to pay more, and they pass on this cost on to the consumers. So I have a question. Why not just legalize for work purposes. We have millions and millions of on documented immigrants, who are hardworking people, they want to work, they want to be legal, they want to pay taxes. Why not? Why can’t the government make a special program for them to fill these jobs? Maybe temporarily, alleviate to ease this pressure on prices? What do you think as an immigration attorney? What is going on here?

Yakov Spektor 01:40

Michael, that’s a fantastic question. And, you know, since I began practicing immigration law more than 15 years ago, me and my colleagues were pretty much asking ourselves the very same question, how come? How come our governance policies is, you know, so let me put it this way, are so inept when it comes to trying to integrate all these undocumented immigrants? We do not. We have so little visa numbers available for for qualified employees here. Yeah. And yeah, you know, in fact, if you know, there is a visa, that’s known as an h1B, that’s a visa for, for workers who do have a college degree, you

know, and there’s only about I actually, you know, I don’t know exactly, I think it was 50,000 of these a year,

Michael Levitis 02:34

leaving aside jobs for highly skilled workers, there are so many jobs available for just a factory workers, people working in the fields. I understand if we’re gonna take away jobs from Americans, but it seems like Americans don’t always want to do these jobs. So what can the government just create something for these immigrants to work, pay tax, and drive our prices lower? What do you think?

Yakov Spektor 03:04

Well, first of all, you know, when, when people say, hey, immigrants are taking our jobs, what they usually mean is that, you know, what, you know, we, we can only do, you know, the underqualified jobs, and the immigrants who come here are taking away these jobs. And they might be right about that. Because when immigrants come here, and when they do not have all the same opportunities, but you know, the US citizens have, you know, what, they will take the lowest paying jobs, and they will work and they will work hard, and that drives the prices down. Okay. And now, you could imagine how many companies how many powerful people in this country might be interested in keeping this way. So that, so that, you know, they don’t have to, so they, you know, they could only pay, you know, a few dollars, minimum wage, you know, to these to, you know, to these undocumented migrants, actually, they are not even bound by the minimum wage laws, and a lot of cases, you know, instead of trying to integrate them, and all of a sudden, these people are now are now legal here, you know, they could basically compete for better jobs, they could command better pay, and then now, they would have to pay higher prices. And what a lot of these anti immigrant folk doesn’t understand is that if you allow your people compete with you to command higher wages, that means that you will be able to command higher wages as well. Now, the reason why the US government is not really trying to do anything like this is because don’t forget the laws that are passed in this country are within the purview of Congress, Congress passes laws and our Congress does not really work very well. Democrats and Republicans are not really cooperating that much. So the administration can only do what they can do based on the current legal framework and that might not be a lot.

Michael Levitis 05:06

So Yakov, the takeaway here is that the politicians, they care more about semantics, they care more about how they’re going to appear to the public and about extra caring about the working people who now have to pay these higher prices because of the shortage of in the workplace.

Yakov Spektor 05:28 

Absolutely.

Michael Levitis 05:33

do the job and do the job for us. And care more about us than caring about keeping their job.

Yakov Spektor 05:44

So Right, absolutely. Well, you know, let’s but if both of us maybe weren’t able to work towards that goal, maybe we’ll be able to accomplish something. Yeah. But I’m not holding my, my breath, we have

Michael Levitis 05:54

to raise the voice and explain that this is common sense. Legalizing immigrants for work purposes. I’m not saying giving them a right to vote right now. I’m not saying that maybe we shouldn’t. I’m saying quickly. Let them work is good for them. It’s good for us. And ultimately, it’s good for America. But meanwhile, there are still avenues that immigrants can pursue to get legalized. And of course, you have to go to an attorney, somebody who does this for a living and does this every day, and does it well. And Yakov Spektor – you’re one of such attorneys. So we strongly encourage people, not to just work of the books and hope for the best but actually go for consultation with tYakov Spektor and find out your rights. See what you can do to get yourself legalized? Yakov, Thank you very much. This was very, very good. Very, very helpful. Appreciateit!