mean more competition for already scarce work. Thatâs not nativism. Thatâs human nature.
It does not have to be this way. We
can
have an America in which a thriving middle class coexists with continued, orderly, legal immigration.
We must begin by reigniting economic growth and opportunity in this nation. When our economy is growing and thriving, employment isnât a zero-sum game. A new Americanâs gain does not have to be an existing Americanâs loss. If that were true, every time we hand out a high school or college diploma to one person we should hand an unemployment check to someone else. In fact, the opposite is true.
Thatâs why, just as in all the other conservative reforms discussed in this book, having an immigration system that works for our country begins with economic growth. Indeed, instead of being an impediment to equal opportunity and widely shared prosperity, the right immigration system is a critical component of economic growth. One study by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin found that if we modernized our immigration system from a family-based one to one focused on merit and productivity, we could grow the economy by almost a full percentage point in the near term and raise per capita growth by over $1,500.
Our current system is damaging our economy. Each year our colleges and universities graduate foreign students who are among the best and the brightest in the whole world. Instead of putting them to work here, innovating products and creating jobs, we send them back to China and India to compete against us. This makes no sense. If one of our college graduates is a world-class basketball player, there is little doubt he will wind up staying to play in the NBA. But if he or she is a world-class scientist, we make them leave!
Making our legal immigration system a merit-based system that encourages innovators will have broad benefits for our economy. Studies show, for example, that 40 percent of American Fortune 500 firms were started by immigrants. Whatâs more, roughly half of the most successful start-ups in Silicon Valley were started by people who werenât born in this country. And since 2000âdespite the restrictions we have on merit-based immigrationâover a third of the American Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine and physics have been immigrants. This kind of scientific and entrepreneurial activity generates jobs across the income spectrumâfrom corner-suite executives to construction workers and IT engineers. Just the kind of jobs that help Americans rise to the middle class and beyond.
Transitioning to a merit-based, high-skilled immigration system would also help immigrants assimilate more quickly and easily into American economic and civil life. As reform conservative authors Yuval Levin and Reihan Salam have written, a merit-based systemâin conjunction with formal civic education requirements, such as a test on American history and government before being granted a green cardâwould have the effect of allowing immigrants to integrate more successfully into American communities and reduce the isolation and poverty of many of todayâs immigrant communities.
The benefits of a merit-based legal immigration system are widely (although not universally) accepted in America. So why, then, has nothing been done about it? The reason is our illegal immigration problem. We will never have the votes needed in Congress to modernize any part of our immigration system until the issue of illegal immigration is adequately dealt with first.
A significant percentage of Americans simply donât trust either party in Washington to address other aspects of immigration reform before illegal immigration has been brought under control, and for good reason. The immigration reform law of 1986 legalized more than three million people who were here illegally, but the enforcement measures were never fully implemented.
It does not have to be this way. We
can
have an America in which a thriving middle class coexists with continued, orderly, legal immigration.
We must begin by reigniting economic growth and opportunity in this nation. When our economy is growing and thriving, employment isnât a zero-sum game. A new Americanâs gain does not have to be an existing Americanâs loss. If that were true, every time we hand out a high school or college diploma to one person we should hand an unemployment check to someone else. In fact, the opposite is true.
Thatâs why, just as in all the other conservative reforms discussed in this book, having an immigration system that works for our country begins with economic growth. Indeed, instead of being an impediment to equal opportunity and widely shared prosperity, the right immigration system is a critical component of economic growth. One study by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin found that if we modernized our immigration system from a family-based one to one focused on merit and productivity, we could grow the economy by almost a full percentage point in the near term and raise per capita growth by over $1,500.
Our current system is damaging our economy. Each year our colleges and universities graduate foreign students who are among the best and the brightest in the whole world. Instead of putting them to work here, innovating products and creating jobs, we send them back to China and India to compete against us. This makes no sense. If one of our college graduates is a world-class basketball player, there is little doubt he will wind up staying to play in the NBA. But if he or she is a world-class scientist, we make them leave!
Making our legal immigration system a merit-based system that encourages innovators will have broad benefits for our economy. Studies show, for example, that 40 percent of American Fortune 500 firms were started by immigrants. Whatâs more, roughly half of the most successful start-ups in Silicon Valley were started by people who werenât born in this country. And since 2000âdespite the restrictions we have on merit-based immigrationâover a third of the American Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine and physics have been immigrants. This kind of scientific and entrepreneurial activity generates jobs across the income spectrumâfrom corner-suite executives to construction workers and IT engineers. Just the kind of jobs that help Americans rise to the middle class and beyond.
Transitioning to a merit-based, high-skilled immigration system would also help immigrants assimilate more quickly and easily into American economic and civil life. As reform conservative authors Yuval Levin and Reihan Salam have written, a merit-based systemâin conjunction with formal civic education requirements, such as a test on American history and government before being granted a green cardâwould have the effect of allowing immigrants to integrate more successfully into American communities and reduce the isolation and poverty of many of todayâs immigrant communities.
The benefits of a merit-based legal immigration system are widely (although not universally) accepted in America. So why, then, has nothing been done about it? The reason is our illegal immigration problem. We will never have the votes needed in Congress to modernize any part of our immigration system until the issue of illegal immigration is adequately dealt with first.
A significant percentage of Americans simply donât trust either party in Washington to address other aspects of immigration reform before illegal immigration has been brought under control, and for good reason. The immigration reform law of 1986 legalized more than three million people who were here illegally, but the enforcement measures were never fully implemented.
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