Immigration reform is a no-brainer to help the economy

People are an asset, not a liability. The United States is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world and the richest country in the world. This is not a coincidence. Those voices that would make us less immigrant-friendly would make us less successful, less prosperous, and certainly less American.

Today, some 11 million "undocumented workers" live in the shadows in the United States. Sixty percent of them crossed the Mexican border or the Canadian border without government approval and 40% arrived by plane and overstayed their visas.

The 844-page immigration reform bill submitted to the Senate by the "Gang of Eight" senators would allow the 11 million to earn legal status by submitting to a background check to weed out those with felony convictions, paying back taxes and a fine. They would then be Registered Provisional Immigrants (RPI), allowing them to work anywhere in the United States, denied means-tested federal welfare benefits for 10 years, and only after the 10 years become eligible for the 3-5 year process of becoming citizens.

This legislation would greatly strengthen the American economy. When a similar immigration reform measure passed in 1986, those immigrants granted legal status saw their incomes rise by 15% simply because they could move around, hold a driver's license, and interview for work without fear. Their legal status made more employers willing to hire them......

There is one piece of legislation now before Congress that would dramatically reduce the deficit over the next decade. That bill has widespread and bipartisan support from Tea Party leaders like Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) and Marco Rubio (Republican, Florida) as well as the US Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO labor federation, and the American Farm Bureau. That deficit-reducing legislation is S744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013.

This guy wants to make me puke. The facts just don't comport with his view of reality. We just had the biggest number of legal immigrants enter this country during the decade ending in 2010--13.9 million. During that same period, we had a net loss of jobs of 400,000. There is no correlation between the number of immigrants and our job needs.

The U.S. adds one international migrant (net) every 36 seconds. Immigrants account for one in 8 U.S. residents, the highest level in more than 90 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13. In a decade, it will be one in 7, the highest it has been in our history. And by 2050, one in 5 residents of the U.S. will be foreign-born.

The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached 40 million in 2010, the highest number in our history. The U.S. immigrant population has doubled since 1990, nearly tripled since 1980, and quadrupled since 1970, when it stood at 9.7 million. Of the 40 million immigrants in the country in 2010, 13.9 million arrived in 2000 or later making it the highest decade of immigration in American history, even though there was a net loss of jobs during the decade. Growth in the immigrant population has primarily been driven by high levels of legal immigration. Roughly three-fourths of immigrants in the country are here legally. With nearly 12 million immigrants, Mexico was by far the top immigrant-sending country, accounting for 29 percent of all immigrants and 29 percent of growth in the immigrant population from 2000 to 2010. The median age of immigrants in 2010 was 41.4 compared to 35.9 for natives.

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