Global Skills Partnerships

Addressing demographic imbalances and future migration pressure….I wrote about imbalances and the U.S. workforce in 2009 and in 2021. Global Skills Partnerships can address this.

An example using healthcare workers:

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by 2030, the global shortage of healthcare workers will reach 14.5 million people. While all countries are facing shortages, the composition of these shortages is different. For example, many African countries need more primary care nurses, and many European countries need aged-care nurses. Promoting more training and migration in these areas is one way to increase the global stock of health workers.

Example of a partnership between Morocco and Belgium:

This project is called PALIM and is currently in the pilot stage. They are training 120 people in specific Information and communication technology skills in need in both Belgium and Morocco. 40 have chosen to join the “away” track and will move to the Flanders region of Belgium, and the other 80 will stay in Morocco. They are now looking to expand the programme to 400 trainees across Morocco and Tunisia, and have spoken about similar projects in Guinea and the Gambia.



Continuing rise in immigration backlog

I reported here that at the end of FY 2021 (Sept 30), there was a visa backlog of 8 million. According to the Migration Policy Institute, this backlog as of late February 2022 as 9.5 million.

The MPI says that USCIS remains archaically reliant on paper applications and records, the staffing is too low, in part because visa processing is financed by applicant fees, not. General revenue, reliance on in-person vs video interviews. Delays have crippled both family and work-based visa processing.

And, immigration court backlogs increased from 438 days in 2008 to 696 days in FY 2019. Pending court cases went from 200,000 in 2008 to 1.6 million today.

New fast track asylum system

Within 60 days the Administration will implement a new policy of having asylum cases handled by asylum officers instead of immigration judges. The policy was submitted for public review in mid 2021. It will take some time to hire up in order to have an impact, as there are 670,000 pending asylum cases. In FY 2021 perhaps 60,000 cases were resolved.

This new system is supposed to resolve an application within six months, as opposed to years. I have noted before that the backlog problem is similar to the border control problems on the Mexican border and the Special Immigrant Visas for Afghan translators: the growth of an elephantine mass of legal processes which top executives in the State Department and DHS don’t really care much about compared to other priorities. (here and here.)

The expected elimination of Title 42 removals from the border will further add to the asylum application backlog.


46.6 million immigrants now

The 46.6 million immigrants (foreign-born, legal and illegal) in the country in January 2022 is the largest number recorded in any government survey or decennial census going back to 1850.

The Immigrant Share of the Population. In January 2022, immigrants represented 14.2 percent of the nation’s total population — the highest percentage in 112 years. The immigrant share of the population has nearly doubled since 1990 (7.9 percent) and tripled since 1970 (4.7 percent).

From the Center for Immigration Studies.