U.S. SHIPBUILDINGShipbuilding to Citizenship: Solving the U.S. Skills Shortage with Immigration
Skill-based immigration can help the United States fill its severe shortage of shipbuilding workers, for both naval and civilian construction.
Skill-based immigration can help the United States fill its severe shortage of shipbuilding workers, for both naval and civilian construction. Bolstering the labor pool would help the US and its allies match the Chinese maritime pacing threat and specifically benefit the AUKUS submarine program.
As the US scrambles to meet AUKUS obligations to deliver Virginia-class submarines to Australia, the shortage has become a critical production bottleneck. The Naval Sea Systems Command has estimated that the US submarine industrial base needs to hire 100,000 skilled employees in the next decade to meet demand.
The submarine labor crisis stems from the smallness of the wider US shipbuilding industry. In 2023, the US produced 157,00 tons of shipping, which pales in comparison with China, which produced 32.8 million tons in the same year. Japan and Korea, the other two major shipbuilders, produced 9 million and 18 million tons, respectively. As for the other members of the AUKUS partnership, Britain produced 64,000 tons and Australia only 4,300 tons. The small size of the US base means that naval builders have a smaller workforce to draw on, and skilled workers often leave the industry when naval construction is low.
There has been no serious consideration of the suggestion of former secretary of the navy Carlos del Toro to open more immigration pathways for shipbuilders as a solution. Yet immigration-based labor generation has worked in the South Korean shipbuilding industry and offers unique advantages in the US context.
The US has long used naturalization to attract people to critical sectors, including the military. More than 5,000 non-citizens enlist in the US military each year. Non-citizen soldiers tend to serve longer, and their children are more likely than other citizens to join the services. The EB-2 National Interest Waiver program provides a path to citizenship for advanced-degree professionals whose work is vital to the US national interest, including AI researchers, biomedical engineers, and materials scientists.
The US similarly needs more welders, additive manufacturing experts and numerical-control machinists in shipbuilding. It must also generate a sustainable long-term labor force. This can be accomplished with a Shipbuilder to Citizen program, in which workers with experience and skill sets critical to the submarine industrial base worked in the industry for a set period in exchange for permanent residency and a pathway towards citizenship. Indeed, such a program would be a generational investment: skilled trades are among the professions most likely to be passed down from parents to their children.
An immigration-based approach would attract many workers. The US immigration system is already overcrowded with applicants. Moreover, skilled tradespeople are somewhat overlooked by current US immigration policy, which focuses on either degree-holding professionals or seasonal unskilled laborers. Shipbuilder to Citizen would not only buttress the submarine industrial base; it would also address an inefficiency in the current immigration system.
Security implications must be addressed. The Naval Sea Systems Command allows only US citizens to build or repair US Navy vessels. But a policy that embraces immigration could in fact help to address security concerns.
Non-citizens and even illegal immigrants are already known to have worked and even died building and repairing US naval vessels, despite the navy’s rules. If immigrant workers had a legal pathway into the industry, contractors and subcontractors could disclose their presence, and the navy could more easily identify exactly what jobs they were doing. They could be restricted to less technologically sensitive process, such as hull welding. Moreover, civilian shipbuilding could be heavily staffed with immigrants, releasing skilled US citizens for sensitive naval work.
There can be no valid concern of immigrants taking American jobs, since a shortage of workers is what makes this conversation necessary in the first place. Even the much-heralded Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing program has produced only 700 graduates in three years. Not even a large influx of immigrants would be enough to close opportunities to the domestic workforce. Indeed, an immigration policy approach serves as a complement, rather than a competitor, to domestic labor generation strategies.
The US needs to move quickly to fulfil its commitment to Pillar One of AUKUS. Timely delivery of Virginia-class submarines is key to maintaining Indo-Pacific deterrence and strengthening mutually beneficial ties between the US and Australia. A Shipbuilder to Citizen pathway can help the US get back on track.
Austin Wu is an analyst intern at ASPI USA. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
