The shortage of construction workers in North Texas, which is estimated to exceed up to 20,000 workers, is leading to building delays and rising home prices. According to the Dallas Morning News, North Texas homebuilders are now looking to Washington to ease this shortage through immigration reform.

According to a 2013 analysis done by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), nearly 40 percent of construction workers are foreign-born. Between current immigration issues and a robust Dallas housing market where prices have soared more than 50 percent in five years, new home affordability is in jeopardy without a sufficient labor force.

Construction is one of those jobs that few Americans want. With many baby boomers heading for retirement, industry leaders have tried to lure non-college-bound students to building trades — but most attempts have been futile. 

Phil Crone, executive officer of the Dallas Builders Association, recently took the next step toward a labor shortage solution. He traveled to Washington, DC and met with congressional lawmakers and the Trump administration on the economic benefits of immigration reform that would expand guest-worker visas in the construction industry. Presently only 1,061 H-2B visas are issued annually to construction workers in the entire state of Texas, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the steady stream of laborers that North Texas alone needs.

Crone’s work is cut out for him. Pitching immigration reform to an administration that advocates border walls and mass deportations is a challenge, but Crone is building support along the way through Javier Palomarez, Trump adviser and president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas; and Alexis Moch, a specialist in immigration reform and lobbyist for the NAHB.

“I think one of the achievable things is finding a workable pipeline for legal, temporary foreign labor,” Moch told the Dallas Morning News. “I think there’s a willingness in the construction sector across trades to coalesce around some sort of solution to address this.”