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Know This Now, September 19, 2025: Top News: State Elected Officials, Hispanic American Business Leaders Launch Hispanics Make America Great Campaign Calling for Work Permits for Immigrant Workers

By September 19, 2025September 25th, 2025No Comments

Top News: State Elected Officials, Hispanic American Business Leaders Launch Hispanics Make America Great Campaign Calling for Work Permits for Immigrant Workers

An all-star panel representing employers, bipartisan state lawmakers from battleground states, and Hispanic business leaders launched the “Hispanics Make America Great” campaign at a press event Tuesday, led by Comité de 100 and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The campaign emphasizes the economic contributions and electoral strength of Hispanics, while urging Congress and the Trump administration to provide work permits for long-term, law-abiding immigrant workers in essential industries such as agriculture, hospitality, construction and healthcare.


Watch the full press conference or follow Comité de 100 on Instagram and X to view video highlights. A few quotes from the event:

“Latinos are central to our nation’s future.
But this contribution must be met with common-sense policies like legal work permits and bipartisan legislation such as the Dignity Act, so hardworking immigrants can contribute without fear.”
-Massey Villarreal, Co-Chair, Comité de 100 & CEO, Precision Task Group, Texas

“ President Trump…we don’t want our vote to go somewhere else. We want to continue saying we did the right thing. We’re asking you to slow down the deportation of these essential workers, as you mentioned.”

-Sam Sanchez, Co-Chair, Comité de 100  & President, Third Coast Hospitality Group, Illinois

“I urge Congress, I urge President Trump to focus on a solution now..the reality is Hispanics are going to control the vote, the swing vote in the state of Georgia, and it’s important for us to grow the Republican Party in our state.”
-Georgia State Representative Kasey Carpenter (R-Dalton)

Launched during Hispanic Heritage Month, the campaign celebrates the political importance of Hispanic Americans, as they are expected to play a decisive role in the 2026 midterm elections:

The virtual press conference convened mayors, state legislators and business leaders from Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Utah, Wisconsin and Arizona. Watch a news report from CBS in San Antonio.

Be Part of the Coalition: From city halls to shop floors, business leaders and elected officials are urging Congress and President Trump to secure America’s workforce with legal work permits. Sign On Today.


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More from the ABIC Network:

Lives In Limbo: Amid Trump Immigration Actions, DACA Holders Navigate the Unknown

The future of the DACA program and the futures of more than 500,000 Dreamers are still unknown, 13 years after DACA’s creation. Many Dreamers are now adults with careers, families, and businesses, yet they must renew their status every two years, never sure if they can stay.

Employers warn the economic implications are huge, since Dreamers contribute over $8 billion in taxes each year. In Texas alone, DACA-eligible residents contribute $2 billion in taxes and $6.2 billion in spending power.

“That’s what is at stake here,” said Juan Carlos Cerda, a DACA recipient who serves as Texas state director for the American Business Immigration Coalition. “It’s jobs, and it’s the economic contributions.”

AFP Wire: Immigration Raids Sapping Business At Texas Eateries

Immigration raids in Texas are devastating restaurants as customers stay home and staff are too afraid to work. Houston restaurateur Oscar Garcia Santaella says sales at his taco shop dropped 40% after ICE staged raids nearby.

“They were there a week. And both that week and the next, we sold nothing,” he said. 

ABIC partner the Texas Restaurant Association said in the second quarter of this year, 23% of its members lost employees, and warned the labor shortage is pushing up food prices statewide. Spokeswoman Kelsey Erickson Streufert told AFP they’ve joined with restaurant industry leaders around the country (through the Seat the Table campaign) to urge Trump to prioritize legal work permits for longtime trusted immigrants throughout the food pipeline in America.

“We’re not talking about amnesty… just the ability to fill an open job, to pay taxes, to follow the law.” -Kelsey Erickson Streufert, Texas Restaurant Association Spokesperson

News Briefing

Hyundai Raid Fallout Sparks More Conversation About Visa Reform

The White House this week moved to limit the fallout of an immigration raid at a South Korean-owned battery plant in Georgia on Sept. 4, as business leaders have expressed concerns that the raid could hurt efforts to bring manufacturing jobs and investment to the U.S.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and state Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Chris Clark spoke about visas on Tuesday.

“We’ve had good conversations with companies that are unnamed that are looking to do business here,” said Kemp. “They understand what is going on on the ground. They also understand the visa issue.”

Clark went a step further, emphasizing the need for changes:

“[W]e need to reform the visa program in America, whether it’s for farm workers, whether it’s for our workers that are coming here to help build a Korean plant or a Japanese plant or a German plant…we need a visa system that allows them to do their jobs. ” – Chris Clark, President and CEO of Georgia’s Chamber of Commerce.

Politico: ‘The whole thing is screwed up’: Farmers in deep-red Pennsylvania struggle to find workers


Farmers in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, many of them Trump voters, are sounding the alarm over a worsening labor crisis as the agricultural workforce has dropped 7% since March, largely due to immigration crackdowns. Dairy farmers like Tim Wood and John Painter have sold off herds or struggled to keep operations running after losing migrant workers, calling the current system “screwed up” and unsustainable.

House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-PA 15) told reporters he’s preparing urgent legislation to reform the H-2A visa program and give year-round operations like dairies access to legal workers.

He plans to introduce a solution based on bipartisan policy recommendations proposed by the Agricultural Labor Working Group last year. While he welcomes the administration’s efforts to reform H-2A, Thompson sees them as temporary and no substitute for legislative action.

“It’s only going to last as long as this administration does, and that’s why we have to codify this…Because what farmers need [is] certainty.” -House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson

“It’s a shame you have hard-working people who need labor, and a group of people who are willing to work, and they have to look over their shoulder like they’re criminals,” said Charlie Porter, the head of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau’s Ag Labor and Safety Committee. “They’re not.”

WSJ Opinion: Trump Secured the Border, So Where Are the Jobs?

Trump argues that cutting illegal immigration frees up jobs for Americans, especially Black and Hispanic workers. But despite record-low border crossings, job growth has stalled, unemployment is at a four-year high, and Black unemployment has climbed to 7.5%.

“[T]he unemployment rate has risen to its highest level in nearly four years. If, as Mr. Trump maintains, less migration is a boon for U.S. workers, where’s the payoff?…If the White House doesn’t do a better job of balancing border security and economic growth, things could get a lot worse before they improve.”

History shows little connection between immigration levels and U.S. job prospects. Economists say immigrants also drive demand and job creation, suggesting the administration’s crackdown may be slowing the economy without helping U.S. workers access more jobs.

NYTimes: Trump’s Reversals on Immigration Mount Over Economic Concerns

President Trump has backed away from some of his toughest immigration measures at times this year, when they risk harming U.S. economic priorities, frustrating some allies, the Times reports. He temporarily paused the deportations of South Korean workers arrested earlier this month in Georgia, considering letting them stay in the United States and help finish the factory, according to officials in Seoul. He also reversed some plans to revoke visas for Chinese students, warning that losing them would “send our college system to hell.”

In June, he also publicly recognized that his immigration agenda was taking a toll on certain industries, including agriculture. The president has “tried to appease both immigration hard-liners and those who rely on immigrant workers.”

“The president is a businessman,” said Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a former acting deputy homeland security secretary under President Trump. “He has a concern when people say, ‘You know, I won’t be able to do business.’”

Newsweek Opinion: Immigration Crackdowns Could Cripple America’s Small Businesses

Javier Palomarez, ABIC partner and President and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, wrote that immigrants keep America’s farms, construction sites, and restaurants running. But recent crackdowns are pulling workers out of these industries, driving up costs and closing small businesses. Nearly 70% of ICE detainees have no criminal conviction.

“Immigration crackdowns might sound like political talking points, but to small businesses they are an existential threat. The impact is immediate and disproportionate, and centered on Main Street, not Wall Street.”

Catholic Bishops Call Immigration Crackdown a ‘Category 4 Storm’
At a Georgetown roundtable, Catholic leaders warned that mass deportations are hitting immigrant communities like a “category 4 storm,” spreading fear and destabilizing parishes and schools.

“The immense majority of the migrants, even without legal status, are not law-breakers. They’re being broken by the law.” – Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski 

The roundtable urged compassionate, human-centered reform.

Syracuse.Com Editorial Board: Cato Raid Lays Bare the Shameful Cruelty of Trump’s Immigration Crusade
The recent immigration raid at a protein bar plant in Cato, NY, highlights a “shameful” example of Trump-era enforcement, the editorial board wrote. Despite claims of targeting violent criminals, no one detained was charged with any sort of violent crime. Workers were allegedly sorted by race, and the raid left the plant operating at just 25% capacity, despite a local unemployment rate near full employment.


“[They] were working to support their families. They were people seeking a better life and working jobs others won’t.”

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