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If the easy option of cheap foreign labor were not available, she argued, businesses would be forced to take steps such as raising wages, offering more flexible work schedules, and assisting with transportation to recruit Americans.

“I wish they would work as hard thinking creatively to get Americans in these jobs as they do lobbying to keep the program in place,” she said.

Mehlman agreed.

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“The $15 minimum wage advocates should be all over this,” she said.

An initiative launched in Alabama in May shows that there are alternatives to importing foreign workers to address labor problems. Like other popular tourist destinations, the cost of living is high and the availability of potential low-skill workers is low in the beach communities along the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, Mobile — a city of nearly 200,000 people about an hour and a half away — has an abundance of youths looking for summer jobs.

The solution, the Youth Empowered for Success Initiative, aims to match some of the 4,000 participants between the ages of 17 and 24 with jobs in the tourism industry. About 100 students received training from the University of South Alabama and are working part-time jobs through the end of this month. The Mobile County Public School System and the Baldwin County transportation agency agreed to provide shuttle service to get the workers to their jobs.

Mehlman said the specifics of that program are outside of FAIR’s area of expertise. But he said businesses should be thinking about ways to recruit Americans who need jobs.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said. “There are probably all sorts of creative ways they can come up with to find American workers.”[lz_pagination]