WASHINGTON (CNS) — With immigrants accounting for 15 percent of U.S. workers, the challenge for Labor Day is to “consider who we are as a nation, how our economy treats all workers, how we welcome the ‘strangers’ among us,” said the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Policy in an annual Labor Day statement.
“The challenge of immigration today is not just at the borders, but in our labor markets,” said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn in the statement released Aug. 23 in advance of Labor Day, Sept. 4.
“The simple fact is many parts of our nation’s economy have become dependent on immigrant workers,” he said. Agriculture, meat and poultry processing and the hotel and restaurant industries count on immigrant workers.
“We have come to depend more and more on international migration to fill our workforce,” he said. “Without them our economy would have huge gaps.”
Yet this influx has been unsettling for many people, Bishop DiMarzio said. As recently as 1960 only about 5 percent of the U.S. workforce consisted of immigrants.
