GLI joined a coalition led by the U.S. Chamber and signed a joint letter calling upon Congress to address America’s broken immigration system and our nation’s border security. For too long, congressional efforts to reform these systems have stalled, leading to significant costs on communities and the economy.

In today’s tight labor market, decreased legal immigration has stifled our economy and led to the significant challenges at the nation’s southern border. Businesses of all sizes and across industries are experiencing significant workforce shortages despite investments in expanding domestic talent pipelines. In order to ease the workforce shortages in the Greater Louisville region and nationwide, as well as solve  the myriad of problems related to those shortages, comprehensive reform is needed to address legal immigration and border enforcement.

What is GLI doing?

Reforms to the immigration system to address workforce shortages have always been a top priority of GLI’s federal agenda. GLI has joined the Legal Immigration and Border Enforcement Reform This Year (LIBERTY) Campaign, comprised of 400 chambers and business associations focused on bipartisan solutions that would break the current gridlock, including:

• Increasing the human, physical, and technological resources along the southern border and at our ports of entry;
• Sensibly reforming our nation’s asylum laws;
• Instituting modern, effective, and efficient employment verification reforms;
• Significantly increasing the annual quotas for employment-based immigrant and nonimmigrant visas;
• Expanding the scope of essential worker programs, specifically allowing employers to meet temporary labor needs in non-seasonal jobs;
• Creating new visa options for international students, entrepreneurs, and other high-demand workers to help American employers meet their critical workforce needs.

GLI signed onto the LIBERTY Campaign letter to Congress sent this week encouraging immediate action to finding reasonable compromises. Further, GLI is in contact with the Kentucky and Indiana federal delegations to reiterate that the time to address these long-needed reforms is now.

Read the full letter and learn more about the LIBERTY Campaign here.