Governor Eric Holcomb (R) teams up with Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) – who is widely viewed as perhaps the most moderate of sitting GOP governors – on a controversial Tuesday Washington Post op-ed urging “Congress to end its two-decade standoff on setting immigration policy” and allow states to “be able to sponsor whatever immigrants serve the needs of their communities,” and pledging, as leaders of states, “to share the accountability.” In the piece, the governors note all of the open jobs in their respective states: “Indiana has about 220,000 open jobs right now and Utah has 107,000, according to the most recent federal data – more than 6 percent of all jobs in both states,” posts involving “high-level skills and entrepreneurship. But states are also awash in unfilled entry-level, low-skill roles – essential in agriculture, health care and the service industries. So, count us as supporters of immigration sponsorship by the states. Under such authority, similar to what employers and universities have already, each state could make its own decisions. They could sponsor no visas or many visas each year, up to a limit set by Congress, for the specific sorts of jobs they need to fill.” The governors claim that “Immigration sponsorship would give states a dynamic means to attract new residents, both from a pool of new applicants from abroad and from the ranks of current asylum seekers. The policy would also expand the states’ responsibility for the contributions and success of these folks in American life.” Govs. Holcomb and Cox close by observing that “in meaningful ways, every U.S. state shares a border with the rest of the world, and all of them need investment, markets and workers from abroad. That border can remain an embarrassment, or it can become a big asset to us once again.”
