West Virginia's labor-force participation rate—the share of the 16-and-older population either working or looking for work—was 55.2% in March, the second-lowest in the country.
Some states including Maine, Indiana and Utah, have sought immigrants to shore up their workforces.
West Virginia represents one extreme in its labor needs, it represents another in its resistance to immigration.
Republican Gov. Jim Justice has signed legislation banning “sanctuary cities” in West Virginia and deployed that state’s own National Guard troops to the Mexican border in Texas. State lawmakers have introduced bills that would: require businesses to conduct additional screening for unauthorized workers; punish companies for transporting migrants who are deportable under U.S. law; create a program to enable state authorities to remove even some immigrants with legal status to work; and appropriate money for Texas to install more razor wire along the Rio Grande.
Local business groups representing manufacturers, bankers, real-estate agents, builders and auto dealers are lobbying against the proposed worker-screening legislation, which they say would deter needed workers and create burdensome and duplicative requirements.
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