Everyone wants to talk about reshoring. Bring back factories. Rebuild the supply chain. Make more in America. Reduce dependence on China. Revive industrial towns. Create good jobs for people who do not want to spend their lives behind a desk. All of that sounds right. But who is going to do the work?

That question underlies every serious conversation about American manufacturing. We can offer tax incentives. We can build industrial parks. We can pass the CHIPS Act, talk about tariffs, and celebrate groundbreakings for new plants. But if manufacturers cannot find enough authorized workers to run the machines, staff the shifts, maintain the equipment, drive the trucks and supervise the line, reshoring becomes more aspiration than strategy.

Investment without workers

The numbers are already flashing red. The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte have projected that U.S. manufacturing could need as many as 3.8 million additional employees between 2024 and 2033. Without major changes, about 1.9 million of those jobs could go unfilled.

At the same time, reshoring is not slowing down. The Reshoring Initiative reported that 245,000 reshoring and foreign direct investment jobs were announced in 2024, bringing the cumulative total to more than 2 million since 2010.

That is the good news. The country is seeing real investment.

The bad news is that investment without workers does not produce parts, chips, vehicles, medical devices, steel, batteries, appliances, or anything else. A factory announcement is not the same thing as a functioning factory. A ribbon-cutting does not fill a second shift.

This is where immigration policy enters the manufacturing conversation - whether Washington wants to admit it or not.

Surrounding, Supporting Manufacturing

Immigrants are already a core part of the American labor force. In 2025, foreign-born workers made up 19.1 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force. They are also more likely than native-born workers to be employed in production, transportation, material moving, construction, maintenance, and service occupations - exactly the kinds of work that surround and support manufacturing.

This does not mean immigrants are the whole answer. They are not. The country needs stronger technical education, more apprenticeships, better community college pipelines, more respect for skilled trades and serious investment in automation and training. Manufacturers are right to build relationships with high schools, veterans’ programs, reentry programs and workforce boards.

But pretending immigration is separate from manufacturing policy is not serious.

A modern plant does not run on machines alone. It runs on reliability. Reliable suppliers. Reliable logistics. Reliable energy. Reliable permitting. Reliable labor.

And right now, work authorization is not reliable enough.

Bottleneck at DHS

Many immigrants who are legally allowed to work in the United States depend on Employment Authorization Documents. This group includes certain spouses of skilled workers, asylum applicants, adjustment-of-status applicants, Temporary Protected Status holders and others who may be lawfully present and work-authorized, but whose jobs depend on a federal card being renewed on time.

When that card expires before the renewal is approved, the worker may have to come off payroll. The employer may lose a trained employee. The plant may have to scramble to cover a shift. The human resources department may have to make a high-risk compliance decision. And none of this means the worker was unqualified, unwanted or doing anything wrong.

It can simply mean the government did not finish the paperwork in time.

That is not a manufacturing strategy. That is a bottleneck, amplified by a recent policy change.

In October 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued an interim final rule ending automatic extensions of employment authorization for many renewal applicants who filed on or after October 30, 2025, subject to exceptions such as extensions provided by law or Federal Register notice. DHS said the change was intended to prioritize vetting and screening before granting a new period of employment authorization.

Avoidable disruption

Security matters. Vetting matters. No manufacturer wants a weak system, and no responsible employer wants to hire unauthorized workers.

But there is a difference between security screening and avoidable workforce disruption. If a worker has already been vetted, already employed, already trained and timely files a renewal, the system should not casually push that person off the job because the agency cannot adjudicate the renewal before the expiration date.

For manufacturers, this is not theory. It is operations.

A single worker losing authorization may not sound like much in Washington. Inside a plant, it can mean overtime for everyone else, a delayed order, a missed maintenance window, a slower production run or another supervisor spending time on staffing instead of quality and output. Multiply that across employers, suppliers and regions, and work authorization uncertainty becomes a hidden tax on reshoring.

The same is true for I-9 compliance. Employers are expected to follow the law exactly. They must verify work authorization without discriminating. They must reverify expiring documents without overreaching. They must understand which workers qualify for automatic extensions, which do not and which rules are changing. They must do all of this while running businesses in a labor market that is already tight.

That is a lot to ask from a small or mid-sized manufacturer that may not have a large legal department.

If the country is serious about rebuilding manufacturing, policymakers should treat work authorization as part of industrial policy.

That means several things.

First, renewal rules should be predictable. When work-authorized employees file renewal applications on time, there should be a clear, durable bridge that prevents unnecessary employment gaps unless there is a specific eligibility, fraud, public safety or national security concern.

Second, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing times should be treated as an economic-performance issue, not just an immigration-agency issue. A delayed work permit is not merely a delayed document. It can be a delayed production schedule.

Third, employers need clearer safe harbors. If a manufacturer relies in good faith on DHS guidance, USCIS notices, Federal Register extensions or E-Verify procedures, the company should not be left guessing whether it is exposed to penalties.

Fourth, immigration policy should be integrated into workforce planning. When federal and state officials talk about manufacturing expansion, they should ask the same question plant managers ask every day: Where will the workers come from?

The answer cannot be immigration alone. But it cannot be immigration never.

Reshoring is not just about land, capital, equipment and tax credits. It is about people. Some of those people were born here. Some came here. Some are waiting on a federal agency to renew the card that lets them keep doing the job they already have.

America can have a serious manufacturing revival. But only if it is honest about the labor market required to sustain it.

If we want to make more in America, we need enough people legally able to work in America.

And that means predictable work authorization is not an immigration side issue. It is manufacturing infrastructure.