Small business owners want US Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott to support immigration reform.

The Carolinas Chapter of the American Business Immigration Coalition, SC Small Business Chamber and other organizations urged the senators to help ease a US worker shortage.

Sen. Graham has said the crises at the Mexican border negate any chance of immigration reform now.

SC Small Business Chamber CEO Frank Knapp said there are two critical issues: The continuing labor shortage and a 40-year low in new business start-ups.

Knapp believes both problems can be addressed with common-sense immigration.

He said the labor shortage will grow worse because many jobs open are for youth and “we’re just not producing them.”

SC birth rates are down. “People all over the world want to come live and work in this country. No other country has this kind of opportunity,” he said.

The groups support a Senate companion bill to the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. The latter would provide undocumented farmworkers a path to citizenship.

They also want the senators to support:

• The Dream Act to allow citizenship for people who came to the US as children.

• The SECURE Act to provide legal status to those with temporary status.

The groups say immigrants have created more than 25,000 new SC businesses and generate more than $720 million in business revenue.

Summer labor market shows improvement

A stronger labor market added cushion to the economic recovery in July ahead of the Delta variant.

Employers are creating jobs at the best pace in nearly a year and the unemployment rate is falling sharply.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 943,000 in July, the best gain in 11 months, the Labor Department said Friday.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.4% in July from 5.9% in June to touch the lowest level since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. in March 2020. The latest data also showed some additional workers were drawn off the sidelines.