Fashion models may have no problem strutting down the catwalk, but strolling over the border is another issue, Mayor Bloomberg said today.
The mayor said that some designers were forced to scrap Fashion Week photo shoots this week because foreign-born models could not get into the country.
“What’s happened is the fashion people can’t get their models over here,” Bloomberg said during his weekly radio show. “They start to cancel.”
Bloomberg blamed this country’s immigration laws and impossible to get work visas.
The mayor, a supporter of immigration reform, also said that these laws threaten the city’s fashion industry, which generates $9 billion in wages a year and nearly $2 billion in tax revenue.
Fashion Week, showcasing the hottest 2011 fall threads, closed out on Thursday.
“The designers want to come over here and create jobs here and we’re not letting them in,” said Bloomberg. “And the girls want to come here. We could lose this business very easily.”
Bloomberg’s warning is similar to a plan made by Rep. Anthony Weiner in 2008.
Weiner’s bill would have made it easier for foreign models to get visas so that they could work in this country.