Maintaining our advocacy push to reform policies that harm the aging services sector workforce and threaten older adults’ access to care and services, staff from LeadingAge national headquarters, state partners, and members joined a three-day fly-in from October 21-23, 2025. 

The “Secure America’s Workforce” event, hosted by the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC), focused on bipartisan immigration reform and cross-sector workforce stabilization. LeadingAge participated alongside business leaders, industry advocates, and coalition partners to spotlight the urgent workforce challenges facing aging services and other sectors.

“We need to embrace people who want to be in this great country, pay taxes, and possess a passion and ability to serve older adults,” said LeadingAge member Rob Liebreich, Goodwin Living president and CEO at an October 22 press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building, as reported by McKnight’s Business Daily News.  Rita Siebenaler, a resident, underscored the essential nature of immigrants to their communities and highlighted the innovative resident-led citizenship program Goodwin launched to assist foreign-born staff with pursuing U.S. citizenship.

More than 200 meetings with congressional offices, engaging both members of Congress and staff, took place over two days. 

Sixteen LeadingAge attendees, representing state associations and resident communities from across the country—California, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Virginia—advocated alongside coalition participants representing agriculture, construction, hospitality, and manufacturing sectors, among others. 

LeadingAge participants advocated for solutions including the Dignity Act (HR 4393) that provide work permits to long-term immigrants with no criminal records, such as current and former Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders. We also advocated for reform to legal employment-based pathways, including support for the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act (S 2759) and the Essential Workers for Economic Advancement Act (HR 5494). 

The goal: to deliver a unified message that immigration reform is essential to solving America’s workforce crisis.

While many offices acknowledged the severity of workforce shortages and expressed interest in immigration as a solution, obstacles remain including the position of the administration on reform, the level and intensity of enforcement, and the lack of trust across parties currently. There was a lot of support for the economic-focused messaging framework around this issue.

Participation in the event elevated the voice of aging services in the national immigration conversation and helped to unify disparate groups. 

Hearing a dairy farmer participant, after listening to perspectives from LeadingAge and our state partners, share with congressional staff his experience balancing the care of his mom, who lives with memory issues, with managing a dairy farm, LeadingAge’s Mollie Gurian, vice president, policy and government relations, reflected on the impact of joint sector advocacy: “The interconnection of workforce needs and these issues was clear—and powerful.”