Maryland Commission
on Immigration Testimony
January 10, 2011 Session
Donald Mooers
Bethesda, Maryland
As a life-long resident of Maryland, I am amazed that we are here today discussing whether immigration is a positive or negative for our State. It is difficult for me to understand why this Commission is in existence to decide whether Maryland is better off or worse because of immigration. A cursory look across our great State – and especially at my locale, Montgomery County, also known nationally as the Economic Engine of Maryland – is all one needs in order to understand that Maryland would be far poorer, and more economically desperate, without our vibrant and diverse immigrant communities.
We see our State as a global leader. My small town of Bethesda serves as the global headquarters of both the world’s lodging leader – Marriott – and one of the world’s largest technology and defense companies – Lockheed Martin. Bethesda’s National Institutes of Health is the center of the world’s fight against AIDS, cancer, heart disease, malaria, obesity, diabetes and dozens of other diseases. And we are just the tip of the iceberg. I-270 from Bethesda to Fredrick is home to DNA Alley, with additional biotechnology centers in Baltimore and other regions of our State. Baltimore is a global center of finance, trading and manufacture. Indeed, every corner of Maryland has a business or organization that is engaged in global commerce.
In our Montgomery College, we see diversity and excellence perfectly balanced. Montgomery College is not only America’s most diverse institution of higher learning; it is also ranked as our country’s most academically successful community college as well. In the college ranks, Johns Hopkins does well on the global stage, as does the University of Maryland – a fact that is sometimes very hard for me, as a Duke grad, to admit.
We are global actors, and lucky for Maryland, we are sitting on the globe right here in our State. Unfortunately, emotion – centered on breeding fear of the outsider – has all-too-often replaced reason with emotion. The events this past weekend in Arizona, where a Member of Congress and Federal Judge were shot at point blank in part because of the poisoned immigration debate in America, show the importance of this Committee's work.
Tongues of fire – and words of rebellion – shoot from hate radio, especially on the topic of immigration. To those elected leaders who support immigration reform, the rights of immigrant workers, or even the need of American employers to hire foreign workers, phrases such as “criminal”, “traitor”, and “not worthy of living” are used.
And yet, here in Maryland, reason has largely ruled. Indeed, how could it not? We understand that immigration makes our communities, and our state, stronger. Immigrants in Maryland create jobs -- they don't take them.
Due to ongoing shifts in Maryland’s workforce, it has become increasingly difficult for employers to find Americans to fill positions on the two opposite ends of the workforce spectrum: Lowest-Skilled and Highest-Skilled jobs. The reason for this gap is that we have become a nation essentially in the Middle-Skilled area. We don’t have enough Americans who have dedicated their lives to basic research, science and technology to fill the positions in Maryland’s research labs. Neither do we have enough Americans whose ambitions include working in the lowest-skilled blue collar positions of construction laborer, assisted-living nursing aide, crab picker or chambermaid. Thus we are left with a labor shortage at both ends of the labor spectrum. This shortage has been filled, luckily for our State, by dedicated and hard-working foreign nationals.
To bring home the great benefits that foreign nationals have provided our State, I want to focus on just three areas: Unskilled jobs, the Education sector, and the High Tech and Research sector.
Unskilled jobs
Maryland is home to a multitude of businesses, including construction companies, hotels, restaurants, landscape companies, recreational managers, racing concerns, farms and food processors whose success depends on the availability of unskilled workers. Unfortunately, under current US immigration law, Maryland’s annual allocation of unskilled workers to fill all the unfilled permanent positions throughout our State comes to only eight (8) individuals. That means that only one worker per year is available for every three Maryland counties.
In the course of my practice, I have advised many of the companies in desperate need of unskilled workers, and know firsthand the struggles they have faced in recruiting enough US workers who are ready, willing and able to dedicate themselves to these positions on a permanent basis. I, like all of you, have not raised my children to look forward to a life of unskilled work. Even in a period of economic downturn, there are not nearly enough Marylanders who have come forward to work in the lowest-rung jobs.
Low-skilled jobs, which rank among the highest demanded occupations in Maryland, are disproportionately filled by immigrants (20% according to a 2005 study by the Urban Institute). The need for workers to fill these positions is further documented in the GWIB’s Maryland Hospitality & Tourism Industry Monograph, which stated that “foreign workers for temporary nonagricultural work . . . are especially important in lodging and restaurant businesses for landscaping, food processing and preparation, cooks and dishwashing positions, but today the number of . . . visas granted annually does not meet the hospitality and tourism need.” Given the current statistics and growth of the immigrant population, the lack of visas to fill vacant low-skilled positions is an impediment to business success and growth.
Without the vast number of immigrants working in these sectors, we would be lost as a State. Our economy depends on these workers – from busboys in restaurants to crab pickers on the Eastern Shore. Make no mistake – these immigrant workers are at the very core of Maryland’s economic infrastructure.
Education Sector
In today’s challenging economic environment, Maryland’s colleges and universities are forced to compete not only to draw top students with the means to pay hefty tuitions, but also to attract world-class faculty to enhance and distinguish their academic offerings and reputation. This has led to a growing number of foreign nationals serving as professors, researchers and other academic staff, especially in the hard sciences, mathematics and engineering. Montgomery College, and community colleges throughout the State, face similar pressures, and have had to turn to foreign national professors and staff in math and science.
Foreign teachers at the K to 12 level have helped two of Maryland’s most important public school systems, Prince George’s and Baltimore City, to meet the challenge created by No Child Left Behind. Due to shortages of highly-qualified teachers in hard-to-serve areas, these school systems had no choice but to turn to US-certified teachers from foreign countries, primarily from the Philippines but also from Jamaica and other nations, to fill critical positions, especially in math, science and special education. Had these systems not brought in hundreds of certified teachers, they would never have been able to have placed highly-qualified teachers in every classroom in Baltimore and Prince George’s. Indeed, as I learned from conversations with education experts, in some cases these foreign teachers were the very first certified instructors these children ever had. Without these Filipino teachers, Maryland’s most precious resource – our children – would have been denied access to a quality public education.
High Tech and Research Sector
Maryland is known around the world as the center of global medical research. A significant part of our economy is fueled by the Biotech and Medical Research sectors, which are centered at the NIH, University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Fort Detrick, the Food & Drug Administration, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bethesda Naval Hospital, and the myriad private companies and organizations that support biomedical and medical research in our State. With the continuing shortage of American science and technology students in university graduate programs, Maryland employers in this sector have no choice but to turn to foreign scientists to fill research positions.
The crisis created by the absence of American graduate students in math, science and engineering has also impacted our State’s defense and related technology companies, as well as the IT industry. Again, without these very smart and talented foreign workers in Maryland companies, we would not be able to compete in the global marketplace.
A 2006 report by the Immigration Policy Institute reveals the profound impact of immigration on science, medical and technological fields. Using 2000 Census data, the study stated that “one in every five doctors, one in five computer specialists, and one in six persons in engineering or science occupations is foreign born.” Preliminary reports from the 2010 Census show that a shift over the past decade has made dependence on foreign researchers and medical professionals ever more acute.
In Montgomery County alone we have witnessed great changes in our demographic profile over the past two decades. We owe much of our current prosperity to the marvelous population mosaic residing in our community. We have residents from over 170 countries, with five percent (5%) coming from just one country – El Salvador. Most Montgomery County residents embrace this rich diversity. Diversity is not something we “deal with” or even “manage”. We welcome it, and in welcoming diversity we serve as an example to the rest of the State and to the Nation as a whole.
Our foreign citizens comprise a high percentage of our most successful entrepreneurs. They work hard, often laboring at two or more jobs just to make ends meet. They value education, and they work to ensure that their children take advantage of opportunities that they never had. They go to church more than US-born citizens, and they have lower divorce rates. Crime rates by immigrants are lower than the US-born population. Our foreign-born community wants most of all to learn English – but we don’t have enough teachers and tutors to meet the demand for adult English literacy. It is no accident that Montgomery County Public Schools and Montgomery College – with their respective high percentage of international students – are known nationwide for their academic excellence.
In concluding my remarks, I want to share with you an experience I had last week as I thought ahead to this morning’s presentation. I asked myself how many foreign-born individuals would come into my life – either directly or indirectly – during a given day. I was amazed at what I found.
- The checkout clerk when I had to buy milk at the Giant was from Bulgaria.
- Over breakfast I caught up with news about my favorite local Maryland sports teams. There were mentions of baseball players from the Dominican Republic, soccer players from Latin America and Europe, hockey players from Russia, Sweden and Canada, and basketball players – including Greivis Vasquez and his heroic play in leading Maryland over Duke last season – from various corners of the world.
- I dropped off shirts and a sport coat at the dry cleaners, where I was helped by a Salvadoran clerk.
- At lunch with a client I went to a local Italian restaurant. My server there was Honduran; the busboy was Guatemalan. On my walk to the restaurant I passed a landscape crew comprised of Central Americans who were beautifying grounds at a nearby office complex.
- A UPS deliveryman from Cameroon left packages to my office. Later I had to go to the local FedEx/Kinko’s office to ship packages, and there I was greeted by the Ethiopian manager and helped by a clerk from the Philippines.
- Near the end of the day I made a deposit at my local bank. Two bank clerks were on duty – one from Haiti, the other from Eritrea. The assistant manager was from Iran.
- I worked that night until late, and at just before 6 PM the cleaning crews arrived to vacuum, empty trash, and generally make my office building habitable for the coming day. The crew hailed from El Salvador and Nicaragua.
- When I finally returned home that evening, my wife and I had delicious crab cakes made from Maryland crabmeat picked largely by Mexican workers.
I am certain that I encountered many more foreign nationals than those listed here. Each of the individuals I ran into over the course of this particular work day is helping to make my community better, working in service-related positions that keep our County and State operational.
From my vantage as a life-long Maryland resident, I thank goodness every day for the fact that so many people from around the world have chosen my State as their home. As we have in Montgomery County, I hope that every corner of Maryland will find ways to embrace and welcome international diversity. For our State to continue to move forward as a global leader in key economic sectors, Montgomery’s wonderful mosaic must become Maryland’s mosaic.
I welcome your questions and comments. It has been an honor to appear before you today.