Bipartisan Bill to Let States Sponsor Foreign Workers

David J. Bier

Senators John Curtis (R‑UT) and Mark Kelly (D‑AZ) have introduced the State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act (S. 5197). The legislation, which would allow states to sponsor foreign workers, was originally introduced in a slightly modified form in 2017 by Senators Ron Johnson (R‑WI) and John McCain (R‑AZ). Sen. Curtis had previously introduced a version during his time in the House. 

Why State-Sponsored Visas Make Sense

A state-sponsored visa is a fantastic idea. If the State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act had existed, there would have been very little illegal immigration since 1986, the last major guest worker reform. American employers would have had a legal way to hire foreign workers, and foreign workers would have had a legal way to come and work. A legal workforce also benefits American workers by creating more opportunities for them in complementary roles as managers and supervisors. 

As I detailed in a Cato policy brief in 2017, a state-sponsored approach is better than a purely federal monopoly on the federal government setting the rules. 

In 1986, illegal immigration was primarily a problem in the seasonal agricultural sector. Now, after four decades of the government muddling up the complex process, the H‑2A seasonal agricultural visa solved the problem for seasonal agriculture. In the meantime, farm labor has shrunk in importance, and illegal immigration has moved on to every other industry. If states had been constantly updating their systems piecemeal over the last 30 years, the illegal immigration problem would not have ballooned into the crisis we have today. 

Every state has different labor needs and labor rules; there is no reason why a federal monopoly makes sense here. There are vast differences in both the amounts and types of labor demanded. Under the federal system, states already sponsor immigrants in their roles as employers and universities. The only difference in this proposed process is that states could sponsor them for any economically related reason they wanted. Canada has a similar, successful, and popular program for provinces. 

How the Bill Works

States opt in to the program, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must approve any application for a state-sponsored program that is adopted by the state legislature and meets a few other minimal requirements, including annual reports on where the sponsored workers live. The foreign workers would receive a status valid for 3 years, renewable, contingent on continuous residence in the sponsoring state. 

There is a cap of 500,000: 5,000 per state and DC, plus a share of a pool of 245,000 based on the state’s population share. The state’s program would expand at a 10 percent rate if fewer than 3 percent of workers fail to comply with the rules, and would be cut by 50 percent otherwise. States could sponsor immigrants who were physically present in the United States as of December 31, 2016, even if they are now in the country illegally. 

The latest version introduces some new labor-protectionist rules that could gum up the program for employers, but given that states would have discretion over how to implement those rules, it is still a very flexible program overall. 

The State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act is a rare thing in immigration policy: a genuinely federalist reform that lets Washington’s one-size-fits-all approach give way to 50 different answers to 50 different labor markets. This legal channel for the workers that America’s economy already demands is better than the illegal one it has settled for. Nearly a decade after Ron Johnson and John McCain first proposed this idea, Congress has another chance to let states lead where Washington has failed to.