President-elect Donald Trump has promised to speed up construction of U.S. warships. But his promise to crack down on immigration could spell trouble for shipyards already facing labor shortages.
by Nicole Foy for ProPublica
Early last year, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to authorize the U.S. Navy to build more ships when he returns to office. “It’s very important.” he said“Because it’s work, it’s a great job.”
But companies that build ships for the government are already having trouble finding enough workers to fill the jobs. And things could get even more difficult if Trump follows through on another of his promises: crackdown on immigration.
The president-elect has told his supporters he will impose new limits on the number of immigrants allowed into the country and launch the largest mass deportation campaign in history. Meanwhile, the shipbuilding industry, which he supports and says has provided significant financial support to Republican causes, is struggling to overcome an acute labor shortage. Immigrants have played an important role in bridging the gap.
A Navy report last year showed several major shipbuilding programs: a few years behind scheduleMainly because of lack of workers. Because the lack is so severe Warship production has stopped It fell to its lowest level in 25 years.
Shipbuilders and the government have poured millions of dollars into training and recruiting American workers, part of a bipartisan bill just introduced in the Senate. offered to spend more money. Last year, the Navy awarded a nearly $1 billion no-bid contract to a Texas nonprofit to modernize the industry with more advanced technology in a way that makes it more attractive to workers. Nonprofit organizations have already flashy tv commercials For submarine work. One of the goals is to help the submarine industry hire 140,000 new employees over the next 10 years. “We build giants,” one of the ads beckons. “It takes one to make one.”
Still, experts say this intense effort has not resulted in a workforce sufficient to meet current needs, nor a workforce large enough to handle expanded production. “We’re trying to get the blood out of a turnip,” said Shelby Oakley, an analyst at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). “The domestic workforce is not there.”
In the meantime, the industry relies on immigrants for a variety of shipyard jobs, including cleaners, welders, painters, plumbers and a variety of jobs similar to those on construction sites. And management is concerned that future immigration crackdowns or restrictions on legal immigration, including restrictions on asylum or temporary protected status programs, could further harm its production capacity.
Ron Wille, president and chief operating officer of All American Marine in Washington, D.C., said his company is “applauding” the workers. And Peter Duclos, president of Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding in Somerset, Massachusetts, said the current immigration system is “so broken” that he’s having trouble securing already valuable workers and finding more.
There is no publicly available data showing how dependent the shipbuilding industry is on migrant labor, especially undocumented migrant labor. Wille and Duclos both said they do not hire undocumented workers, and industry experts say undocumented workers are unlikely to work on projects that require security clearances. But a ProPublica report last year found that some shipyards with government contracts used such workers. The report focused on a major shipyard in Louisiana operated by a company called Thoma-Sea. Undocumented immigrants were often hired through third-party contractors..
The story was told about a young undocumented Guatemalan immigrant who was helping build an $89 million U.S. government ship to track hurricanes. When he died on the job after working for two years at Tomas, neither the company nor the subcontractor paid death benefits to his partner and young son.
ProPublica also reported that executives at Thoma-Sea, who declined to comment, earned tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to Republican candidates. However, if President Trump’s last term in office is the standard, the shipbuilding industry will not be exempt from future crackdowns. one of final workplace raid Under Trump’s first administration, it was done at a much larger shipyard in Louisiana called Bollinger.
In July 2020, federal immigration officials arrested 19 “illegal aliens” at the Bollingers Lockport shipyard, according to one agency. Article from the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to provide information about the raid. According to Bollinger’s website, the shipyard produces U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrol boats. According to news reports, five of the arrested workers were taken to an ICE detention center and 14 were released pending their deportation cases.
Bollinger has denied any wrongdoing since the raid. Four years later, publicly available federal court records show no evidence that Bollinger executives have been charged in this regard. Meanwhile, federal election records show that the company’s executives donated hundreds of thousands of dollars last year to Republican elected officials, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Speaker Steve Scalise, both Republicans from Louisiana. The company did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.
President Joe Biden’s Administration Workplace search and seizure ends As in Bollinger’s case, he said he would instead focus on “unscrupulous employers.” Homeland Security officials did not respond to questions or provide data on how many employers have been indicted since then. But Trump’s appointed “border czar” Tom Homan has signaled that the incoming administration will carry out strikes again. Asked how a second Trump administration would increase shipbuilding while restricting immigration, a Trump transition spokesman doubled down on the president-elect’s deportation promise and said he would focus his crackdown on “illegal criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers.”
Days after Trump’s election, a group of undocumented shipyard welders leaving a Hispanic grocery store near Port Houma, Louisiana, expressed dim views when asked what they thought the future would hold. “Well, we could be deported,” said one man, who declined to give his name, laughing nervously. Another man, a welder from Coahuila, Mexico, who had worked in the United States for about two years, also declined to give his name but said he was worried about losing the life he had built in the country.
“If they catch you, they will take you away and you will have to leave everything behind,” he said.
This story was originally published here. ProPublica.
