Immigration Reform

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to review the recent history of immigration reform and discuss the progress legislators have made in order to address the challenges of illegal immigration, and how it has impacted the hospitality industry today. The goal is to help better understand the impact, both positive and negative, that the changes immigration legislation has on the industry and what implications may be created that may increase the ability of employers and federal agencies to better identify the legal employment status of current and future employees.

In today’s news, immigration has been one of the biggest topics to mention besides the economy. Starting with Arizona’s controversial immigration reform bill that was passed, more and more states have begun proposing new legislation to try and close the gap in a broken system, including the State of Georgia, the state where I work. Many administrations in the past has tackled on and failed to enact comprehensive immigration reform, but with no success of implementing a new legislature, many state governments have decided to take on matters into their own hands.

The Conflict

As a manager working in the hospitality industry, it is evident of the challenges we are faced with filling positions with skilled workers. However, we have been successful resolving our employment issues often times through the hiring of immigrants. With the change in immigration legislation and employment laws, the industry faced the challenge of not only finding skilled labor, but also ensuring that the employees were legal to work in the United States. In the industry today, over half of the labored staff working in hotels are immigrants. With the recent legislature that was passed in the State of Georgia, hotels, including mine have seen a drop in employment inquiries and now it presents a challenge of filling less desirable positions.

It’s a fact that immigration had a huge impact on U.S. hotels. For...