Dive summary:

• There is already a shortage of workers in the home-building industry, and proposed immigration reform legislation in the U.S. Senate is not about to help, Rick Judson, the chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, told Congress.
• Judson, a builder from Charlotte, N.C., told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "First and foremost, the program wrongly singles out the construction industry with a discriminating set of rules, including an arbitrary and meager cap that not only ignores but rejects the value of the housing industry to the nation's GDP."
• Foreign-born workers make up 22% of the workforce in an industry that, in normal times, creates 17% of the nation's economic output, Judson said, and NAHB members are already reporting delays and lost work because of labor shortages.

From the article:

... with the current unemployment rate well below 8 percent, labor shortages in all facets of the industry – including framers, carpenters, bricklayers and weatherization workers – continue to undermine the housing recovery. ...