The Power of Local Voices in Iowa

As the Iowa Caucuses inch ever closer, candidates desperately try to distinguish themselves from the pack. Despite the amount of time devoted to the problems of “illegal immigration,” only 7% of Iowa voters identify it as their most important issue in this election, according to the latest CNN polls. How do we explain the discrepancy? From what I heard yesterday, it’s not that Iowans aren’t thinking about immigration — it’s that they’re tired of rhetoric and fear-mongering, and desperate for real solutions to the broken system.

On Wednesday, January 20th, we sat down with business leaders and Iowa State staff at the Ames Chamber of Commerce to discuss immigration reform. The event, put on by the Iowa Alliance for Growth (@grow_IA), focused on how our broken immigration system has provided challenges for many of Iowa’s key industries and organizations, such as agriculture, medicine, and education. (To read more about the event, see the Ames Tribune coverage here.) We covered a lot that day, but I want to share three key insights from our conversation:

“You hear a lot of politicians talking about border security. But for a place like Ames, with our tier 1 research center, that is not the main immigration issue that affects us. We need to think about getting more STEM talent.” — Dan Culhane, CEO Ames Chamber of Commerce.

Attending stump speeches and town halls across the state, you hear the words “border security” time and time again. Republican candidates sound the alarm over immigrants surging through a “porous” border (which many say is more secure than ever), while Democrats compete over how much they can expand President Obama’s executive actions (the White House maintains they have already done as much as legally possible).

But here in Iowa, people are worried about growing companies and keeping the best workers here. They’re trying to figure out how they can hire crucial engineering and technical talent, how to create opportunities for the thousands of international students studying at Iowa State University, and how to improve the lives of immigrant workers facing decades of green card backlogs and outdated visa structures.

Put more simply, the Iowans I’ve spoken to are not interested in rhetoric or fear-mongering. They want to know how we are going to fix our broken immigration system. Ames Chamber CEO Dan Culhane laid it out right from the start — “Immigrants are not taking jobs away from Americans.” Once we get beyond this talking point, beyond the mire of “amnesty” and walls, we can start talking about real solutions.

As Republican and Democratic candidates march through Iowa, take note — commonsense immigration reform is a real need and priority for this community.

“There seems to be an obvious disconnect between the international students looking for jobs and the businesses having trouble hiring new talent. This seems easy to fix, yet it feels like nothing is being done.” — Ashley Huth, Advisor ISU International Students and Scholars Office

While Ames has 4,802 foreign students who contribute over $73.6 million in tuition and $61.3 million in living costs, only 28.9% of those students stay and work in Ames after graduation. That’s a huge loss to the local economy.

A representative from Vermeer, a company that builds agricultural and industrial equipment, told us that they have software engineering positions that have been open for over a year. At the same time, there are 3.4 open STEM jobs for every unemployed worker.

Visa caps and outdated restrictions are largely responsible. The 65,000 annual H-1B cap was met within a single week in 2015, crushed by over 230,000 applications. For businesses in Iowa, losing out on that one crucial hire because of a 50–50 lottery system (in addition to the filing, fees, and research required) could be devastating, and many attendees told us that they have had to severely limit hiring and growth because of this uncertainty.

Attendees identified opportunities for collaboration - ways universities could leverage their student populations and visa flexibility to support small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs (such as Global Entrepreneurs in Residence or Global Talent Retention programs) — but these small hacks and workarounds are insufficient to meet the real demands of rapidly growing and changing economies like Iowa’s.

“Talking about the human side of immigration, we need to remember that they have lives. There are international students here who have friends, families, and other loved ones.” — Armine Ghalachyan, ISU International Students and Scholars Office.

When I asked attendees about aspects of immigration that are normally left out of the national debate, Armine brought up how a broken immigration system negatively impacts students and workers. She talked about her husband had graduated from an American university with a STEM degree, but because he was not able to get an H-1B because of caps, he was forced to go on a dependant status. Like many of dependents of high-skilled workers, this means he cannot work and his visa is entirely reliant on Armine’s.

Deb Vance, the interim director of the ISU International Students and Scholars Office, explained that, while the University is not subject to the same caps for employment visas, new hires and assistant professors are subject to the same green card lines as any other immigrant hoping to become a permanent resident. For people from countries like China, India, or the Philippines, the wait for a green card can be over a decade (the story is worse for family-based petitions — USCIS is currently processing applications from 1993 for Filipino immigrants). During this time, spouses can’t work and travel can be extremely difficult — Deb told us about a professor who was stuck outside of the country for 18 months before he was able to get his visa and return.

Ben Jung, a small business owner in Iowa and a member of the Iowa Alliance for Growth, stresses that immigrants are incredibly entrepreneurial (in fact, they are twice as likely to start companies as native-born Americans) and invested in their local communities. Anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals don’t just create barriers — they also grossly misrepresent the intentions and contributions of these people to our country. In addition to stressing the economic benefits of reform (and the costs of inaction), our group also emphasized the importance of raising their voices and telling their own stories to persuade lawmakers.

Immigration is one of, if not the, most important issues in this election. However, candidates continually fail to answer the real questions so many Iowans have about the issue:

How will you help us keep the best and brightest here?

How will you improve quality of life for hard-working immigrants?

How will you ensure Iowa, and states like it, can continue to build strong, vibrant, resilient economies and communities?

Will you support the mass deportation of 11.3 million people, crippling our economy, destroying families, and creating a police state?

If you are a caucus-goer or voter, and you agree that our next President must embrace immigration reform and reject the absurd proposals of mass deportation, take the Immigration Action Voter pledge here.