Business leaders promote legal immigrants

Texas business leaders are supporting plans that will allow more legal immigrants. They recognize that we need these workers and will lobby Congress. DP

By PATRICK McGEE, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
Star-Telegram.com: DALLAS — Saying they need the workers, Texas business leaders have banded together to support immigration reform that would bring in guest workers and more legal immigrants.

The Texas Association of Business announced Tuesday the formation of Texas Employers for Immigration Reform, a group they said will lobby Congress.

“If we think we’re going to solve this problem by putting up a wall on the Mexican border, it’s not going to work,” said Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business. “If we have enough legal immigrants to meet the needs of the employers, a lot of this problem goes away.”

Hammond spoke at The Mansion on Turtle Creek hotel. He was joined by about half-dozen other business leaders, including Bo Pilgrim, chairman of Pilgrim’s Pride, a Fortune 500 poultry company based in Texas. Others included representatives from the agriculture and hotel industries.

They were also joined by Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute, who has pushed for immigrant-friendly reform.

Jacoby said she still hopes for an immigration bill before the November election and believes only about 20 percent of the public favors a tough, enforcement-only approach.

“There are some guys who say, ‘Over my dead body,’ but most people understand we need workers in America,” she said.

Hammond said employers want to obey the law and hire workers who are here legally, but he said the government has not given them an effective way to do that.
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