Sam Sanchez, a Chicago restaurateur, was incensed when President Biden announced last September that his administration would extend work eligibility to nearly half a million Venezuelans, many of them migrants who had recently crossed the border illegally. What about his undocumented employees like Ruben, a Mexican father of two U.S.-born children who has been in […]
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Immigrants in Maine Are Filling a Labor Gap. It May Be a Prelude for the U.S.
Maine has a lot of lobsters. It also has a lot of older people, ones who are less and less willing and able to catch, clean and sell the crustaceans that make up a $1 billion industry for the state. Companies are turning to foreign-born workers to bridge the divide. “Folks born in Maine are […]
Read MoreHow Japan Is Trying to Rebuild Its Chip Industry
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is transforming the small Japanese farm town of Kikuyo into a key node in Asia’s chip supply chain. TSMC, as the company is known, dominates the global semiconductor business. At its home base in Taiwan, TSMC sits at the center of a web of factories, suppliers and engineering firms. Now that […]
Read MoreImmigration is helping to meet hiring demand, and may explain data mysteries.
Another month, another burst of strong job gains. Employers added 303,000 jobs in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday. It was the 39th straight month of job growth and a much larger gain than forecast. The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 3.9 percent in February. The continuing […]
Read MoreWhat the Francis Scott Key Bridge Meant to Baltimore
Blue-collar workers crossed it. Families went crabbing around it. Teenagers celebrated new driver’s licenses by traversing it. And couples were known to get engaged near it. Completed in 1977, the Francis Scott Key Bridge was a practical, final link to the beltway of roads that circled Baltimore Harbor, a much-needed solution to reduce Harbor Tunnel […]
Read MoreHow African Immigrants Have Revived a Remote Corner of Quebec
Not long ago, the handful of African immigrants in Rouyn-Noranda, a remote city in northern Quebec, all knew one another. There was the Nigerian woman long married to a Québécois man. The odd researchers from Cameroon or the Ivory Coast. And, of course, the doyen, a Congolese chemist who first made a name for himself […]
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