By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The head of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce hears often from employers who can’t find workers, so here’s his solution: Let those workers come from south of the border, make them pay for a work permit, and use the money to enhance border security.

That plan produces many winners, Randy Zook told me.

First, there are 7.1 million open jobs, but not enough Americans who are available to work, want to work, and/or have the necessary skills. Immigrants can help farmers, construction firms, and employers like the Peco Foods chicken plant in Pocahontas meet their labor requirements. Business and industry would do much of the vetting to ensure immigrants are job seekers, not drug dealers.

Meanwhile, immigrants could pay for a work permit – say $2,500 for two years. That’s a lot, but it beats paying a coyote to make the dangerous journey across the border. Then they’d be legal, though not citizens, and wouldn’t have to worry about being deported.

And if 10 million immigrants paid $2,500 each for a work permit, there would be $25 billion available for border security. Remember when the government shut down over President Trump’s request for $5.7 billion for a border wall, followed by his national emergency declaration for $8 billion, followed by lawsuits? This would provide billions more, and it would allow Trump to say he really did make the Mexicans (and Central Americans) pay for the wall.

We have an unmet demand for labor and an abundant labor supply south of the border. Meanwhile, government hasn’t solved the border issue satisfactorily. Maybe it’s time for another approach.

“There are all kinds of ways to make this thing work if you start with the premise that it ought to be a market-driven, market-based system,” Zook said.

Zook and others who support a version of this idea must convince lawmakers that winners would outnumber losers. And there would be some losers. Once an immigrant fills a job, it’s no longer available for an American (assuming one wants it and can fill it). Having a large number of open jobs causes wages to rise. If immigrants fill them working for less, then employers can pay less to others.

That’s Sen. Tom Cotton’s argument. He recently helped re-introduce the RAISE Act. It would replace the current legal immigration system, which emphasizes family reunification, with one focused on high-skilled immigrants Cotton says can best expand the economy. Cotton’s bill actually would reduce overall immigration levels.

Zook has broached his thoughts with Cotton’s staff and plans to push it harder when the Chamber of Commerce takes a group to Washington in May.

Cotton is right to emphasize highly skilled immigrants such as Albert Einstein and Dr. Wernher von Braun, who helped develop the space program. But Zook is right that the country needs laborers for unfilled lower-skilled jobs. There just aren’t enough young American workers to fill them, or to pay for the baby boomers’ rising Social Security and Medicare costs. Also, immigrants don’t just “take” American jobs. They also create them through their contributions to the economy.

One other question must be answered: Why aren’t more Americans available to do these jobs?

Zook has many thoughts about this. One is society long has devalued good-paying jobs in favor of college degrees, some of which aren’t that useful. Young people continue to be given the impression that anyone without a college degree is a “failure,” Zook said.

As Zook points out, many good jobs can be made available with skills learned in much less than four years. A trucking executive once told him he could hire 500 drivers immediately and a couple of thousand in 60 days if he could find them. A driver can earn a commercial driver’s license in weeks and then make more money than many college graduates. Tradesmen also are in critically short supply. A “major hospital executive” told Zook the medical facilities lining Little Rock’s I-630 need more than 600 registered nurses.

One solution: The system – including colleges and universities – should speed up the process of giving people the skills they need to earn an honest living. It shouldn’t take four years to get a degree.

In the meantime, there’s Zook’s other solution to illegal immigration: Make them legal. Just make them pay for it.