January 7, 2025
The nation is facing a workforce crisis. With shrinking birth rates and an aging population, there are pervasive workforce shortages in many sectors. Foreign-born residents represent a pool of workers who can offset population loss and fill some of the gaps in workforce needs. Additionally, the economic integration of foreign-born New Yorkers is a critical pathway to social, civic, and political integration. Yet, many barriers significantly hinder the ability to harness the potential of immigrant workers and curtail the opportunity structures afforded to immigrant New Yorkers.
In this brief, we present five cases adapted from real-life situations. Each case illustrates the conditions that obstruct the ability to leverage the economic contributions and facilitate the economic integration of thousands of immigrants in New York State. These conditions are unique to the immigrant experience and can be addressed through policy and practice interventions. We corroborate the cases using experts’ testimonies, offered at forums and events convened by the Institute on Immigrant Integration Research & Policy in 2023-2024. The brief discusses problems facing immigrant New Yorkers which include the inability to reach and serve the population with resources and information; limited capacity to address fiscal constraints at the micro, meso, and macro levels; policies and regulations that limit eligibility and exclude populations from benefits and protections; protectionism, prejudice and lack of awareness; and system fragmentation, lack of sufficient coordination and integration of services. The brief also offers policy and practice recommendations which include expanding access to accelerators of immigrant economic integration such as scaling culturally and linguistically sensitive workforce development, and providing greater access to capital, social, physical, and mental health services, credentialing and licensing, in-state tuition and state aid, English language learning, and labor protections. Expanding community and employer education to facilitate social cohesion and skill-based recruitment as well as strengthening cross-sector partnerships that bridge gaps in serving this population are recommendations that emerged from the experts.
