PHOENIX — Immigration is a the top electoral issue across the country, but few places feel it more than Arizona, the only swing state along the southern border and home to one of the races that could make or break control of the Senate.

Arizona businesses say the lack of workers threatens to halt projects in industries like construction, hospitality and agriculture — and that without changes to the federal immigration system, the economy could face a devastating blow.

About 16.2 percent of Arizona’s workforce is made up of immigrants, according to a American Immigration Council 2022 Study. Meanwhile, the state also faces a job shortage, 197,000 in June, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Monica Villalobos, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the labor shortage leads to a larger economic impact, such as housing prices.

“We have some members in the construction industry who are not able to find workers to complete the projects,” she said. “And when they can’t complete the projects, it means there’s a housing shortage.”

Immigration has also been at the center of attention in the competitive Senate race between Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake, a former news anchor and the 2022 Republican candidate for governor of Arizona. The race is to fill the seat vacated by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

As Congress struggled to pass immigration reform, Sinema and a bipartisan group of senators produces an invoice thatamong others, it would be greatly extended workers’ permits to immigrants. Political pressure ultimately caused the bill to fail on a procedural vote.

Michael Infanzon, a lobbyist at Canyon State Business Alliancesaid the current legal immigration system is an “absolute fiasco” for both businesses that need employees and workers.

“Imagine if you want to go from Maryland to Virginia, and it’s going to take three years to get the paperwork to go from Maryland to Virginia to work for six months,” he told CNBC in an interview. “Are you going to keep doing this or are you going to jump the border to do this and then come back?”

Gallego said he supports the bipartisan legislation. He also called for adding more Border Patrol agents and streamlining cross-border trade.

“I have been focused on making sure our ports of entry have the advanced technology and manpower to handle the cross-border trade our country relies on,” he said in a statement to CNBC.

Lake is a strong supporter of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, who campaigns for the enterprise the largest internal deportation in US historyusing the National Guard to help find those in the country illegally. Lake told CNBC that the shortage of workers is because schools are not preparing students for the job market, and the solution was to improve schools.

“It makes me sick that we have millions of people coming across our border about three hours from here and getting jobs over our graduates coming out of high school and college,” she said in an interview in her office. About a third of the state’s foreign-born immigrants did not complete high school, according to the American Immigration Council.

John Graham, president and CEO of development company Sunbelt Holdings, said the U.S. lacks the labor force to fill jobs in industries such as construction and agriculture.

“The problem is, these people aren’t taking somebody else’s job,” he said, standing next to a hotel his company is building in downtown Phoenix. “Those are jobs that we absolutely have to have, and there’s no substitute for that if there were some kind of significant job loss.”

Graham is a board member of the American Business and Immigration Council, which sent President Joe Biden a letter in April asking him to “extend a special category of immigration permits to people who can fill positions in which there is a shortage of labor.”

In addition to electing the next senator, Arizonans will vote on a proposal that, if passed, could allow state and local police to arrest non-citizens who have crossed the border illegally if they have probable cause.

The twin proposals of mass deportation and allowing local law enforcement to arrest those in the country illegally could have a chilling effect not only on immigrants in the country legally, but also on businesses looking to relocate to Arizona , Graham said.

The ballot measure is evocative of a 2010 state law this was also done by the fact that being in the country illegally was a state crime. In addition, the law made it illegal to knowingly hire or transport unauthorized immigrants and made it a crime to have no immigration papers.

The law led to racial profiling and a decline in the number of workers in the state. A study conducted by Grand Canyon Institute found that the 2024 ballot measure could cost $325 million annually if implemented.

Graham said the previous law “definitely created a business stigma for our state when conventions were canceled.”

“Basically, we were an outlier, with a lot of business around the country because of it,” he said.