there are 30,000 open jobs in North Dakota and although our Workforce continues to grow if we get every high school and college graduate every individual coming out of our correction system um every person on disability into the workforce tomorrow we would still have thousands of open jobs and so we really do need to be looking outside of our states borders and outside of our nation’s borders to help identify how we can recruit workers to fill the jobs that we have available Katie Austin how is director of North Dakota’s Workforce division overseeing the newly created office of legal immigration their goal to bring together immigrants seeking employment and companies that need workers with the political climate that we’re in Immigration has become a really hot topic and when we talk about the work that we’re doing through the office of legal immigration a lot of times the conversation does go to conversations around the Border or illegal immigration and that’s really not what we’re doing really our focus is proactively identifying appropriate Pathways and programs that we can utilize to help fill jobs in North Dakota employers have been responding really well there’s a ton of enthusiasm around the work that we’re doing communities are responding well too and so we’ve been able to really work with those who are already working in the space