OK, here are the facts...Sal's column, in black and white:
Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken U.S. Immigration System
The U.S. immigration system is flawed and broken. Conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers. What is good for America should be the sole criteria for immigration reform.
Our laws today are unenforced and citizens and companies who play by the rules are undermined by bad actors who do not. This undermines our rule of law and slows our economic growth. In today’s global economy, we cannot afford the status quo.
Congress must pass legislation that will fix our broken system. We have the strongest economy in the world, the most innovative businesses and a history replete with examples of how legal immigration has made us stronger. Conservatives need to seize on immigration reform as an opportunity for growth, to reaffirm who we are and what makes our country great.
Our economy has long outgrown the visa programs we have now. In high-skilled industries such as engineering and medicine, we do not have the talent we need to fill the jobs. These industries are the fastest growing in the country and we depend on them for job creation and economic growth. But according to the Partnership for a New American Economy, we face a shortage of more than 235,000 jobs in science, technology, engineering and math fields by 2018.
On the other end of the spectrum, we face debilitating workforce challenges as well. Visa limits for seasonal workers, such as those needed by farmers, cannot keep up with demand. And those visas that are available are too cumbersome, complex and cost prohibitive for many employers to use. That means fewer fruits and vegetables per season, lost revenue and an increased reliance on imports, many of which are not subject to the same level of health regulations as our homegrown crops. By instituting worker visa programs that adequately address our farm labor demands, we can keep American agriculture strong.
With a rational visa policy, we also improve security by allowing border security agents to devote their attention where it is most needed — keeping out law-breakers, drug dealers, criminals and terrorists.
Border security must be an essential element of any immigration reform. In addition to using physical barriers, surveillance and enforcement, we have to stop the biggest problem — the rich incentives for illegal immigration. They are a magnet for people to come here illegally. That means fixing the broken system we have that relies on quotas and diversity, instead of a system based on what America needs.
Doing nothing now means hurting businesses just as we are coming out of the Great Recession. Today, 40 percent of our Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or child of an immigrant. Much of the new small-business growth in the country is because of legal immigrants.
Because we have no visa for entrepreneurs, the most innovative people around the world are starting companies and creating jobs elsewhere. Meanwhile, other countries understand that entrepreneurs are an economic necessity. While we actively turn away future CEOs, the rest of the world is offering incentives to attract new businesses.
The U.S. immigration system is flawed and broken. Conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers. What is good for America should be the sole criteria for immigration reform.You disagree with that?
We don’t have a “broken immigration system”. We have a lawless immigration system. We have an abandoned immigration system where both parties, in congress and the White House, have agreed not to enforce the laws for the last 30 years. And now that the results of that dereliction of duty are transparently obvious, they call it a “broken system”.
There is no STEM worker shortage. America Has More Trained STEM Graduates than STEM Job Openings
A number of studies have found that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) workers are not in short supply. In “The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortages,” demographer Michael Teitelbaum, writing in The Atlantic, summarizes the argument from his new book, Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent: “No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations,” he observes. Teitelbaum and others have pointed out that wage growth for STEM workers has been flat for more than decade, a clear indication that such workers are not in short supply.
Visa limits for seasonal workers, such as those needed by farmers, cannot keep up with demand. And those visas that are available are too cumbersome, complex and cost prohibitive for many employers to use. That means fewer fruits and vegetables per season, lost revenue and an increased reliance on imports, many of which are not subject to the same level of health regulations as our homegrown crops. By instituting worker visa programs that adequately address our farm labor demands, we can keep American agriculture strong.
We have H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Visas
Doing nothing now means hurting businesses just as we are coming out of the Great Recession. Today, 40 percent of our Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or child of an immigrant. Much of the new small-business growth in the country is because of legal immigrants.
Habeeb and Leven bolster their case that immigrants are especially entrepreneurial by citing an empty statistic from a lobbying group’s report stating that “immigrants or their children founded 40% of today’s Fortune 500 companies.” That report counts a company as founded by an immigrant (or by a person with even one immigrant parent) even when there were multiple co-founders who were not immigrants or the children of immigrants. What’s more, the report includes companies such as DuPont, founded in 1802, and Pfizer, founded in 1849. In fact, all but a handful were founded more than half a century ago. Thus, the statistic has virtually no meaning for today’s immigration debate.
Because we have no visa for entrepreneurs, the most innovative people around the world are starting companies and creating jobs elsewhere. Meanwhile, other countries understand that entrepreneurs are an economic necessity. While we actively turn away future CEOs, the rest of the world is offering incentives to attract new businesses.
Wrong. Like many countries, the U.S. provides a means of entry for wealthy people who will pump money into its economy. (See the Immigration and Nationality Act, at I.N.A. § 203(b)(5),8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5).) This is known as the employment Fifth Preference or EB-5 immigrant visa (which allows permanent residence immediately upon entry to the U.S.). However, applicants for a U.S. green card based on investment must not only invest between $500,000 and $1million in a U.S. business, they must take an active role in that business (though they don’t need to control it).
Green cards for investors are limited in number, to 10,000 per year. Of these, 3,000 are reserved for investors in rural areas or areas of high unemployment. If more than 10,000 people were to apply per year, you would be placed on a waiting list based on your Priority Date (the day you filed the first portion of your application).
But don’t worry yet: This 10,000 limit has never been reached. What’s more, only principal applicants are counted toward the 10,000 limit. Accompanying relatives are not. Therefore, many more than 10,000 people per year can be admitted with EB-5 green cards.
That means no special pathways to citizenship that allow undocumented immigrants to cut in line, Russo cautioned, but rather some reasonable procedures that require “the 11 million people who are here illegally obey the law, pay taxes and come out of the shadows.
“We have to get them right by the law in exchange for legal status, but not unbridled amnesty,” Russo wrote. “This should include penalties, background checks to root out criminals, and the requirement that they learn English, understand the Constitution and be committed to our basic freedoms.”
This is amnesty, pure and simple. It is no different than what McCain and Schumer say. They are legalizing the status of the lawbreakers allowing them to stay and work here, thus competing legally against Americans for jobs and depressing wages further.
We can stop right there. That sentence in and of itself tells us we are not talking to a Tea Partier. We need enforcement, and here he's talking about "immigration (new) legislation", meaning the Boehner-Obama abortion.
Tilt, bingo, game over.
A further comment: I looked into the Tea Party Express when they first showed up three or four years ago putting together excursions and rallies against Obamacare. If they'd been in Big Bidness's pocket then, they'd have supported it like the AMA, AARP, Consumers Union, and other Judas NGO's that endorsed Sovietcare, because the Chamber et al. had already secretly signed off on Obamacare in 2008, before the election. (The play was, let Obama/Hillary pass Sovietcare, dump the employee health plans, flow trillions to their bottom lines -- and then blame the Democrats. Perfect, right?)
The fact that TPE is now jumping ship and has been "gotten to" by the Business Roundtable types, Karl Rove, the Chamber and NAM et al., is a fact to be deliberated with great sadness.
Most of the TPE board a few years ago were old Reaganauts and veterans of the Gray Davis recall (may they be praised for that!), and while not "Tea Party" folks sensu stricto, they were solid California conservatives and Reagan people who, when they were recalling Gov. Davis, were actively putting forward ACU 100%-er Tom McClintock as Davis's successor (then the RiNO's trumped them by getting a Hollywood heavy to help them play "capture the flag", in identical manner to the "Me Too"/Tom Dewey men who roped in Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 to suppress the Taft conservatives).
How Karl Rove, Boehner, the RiNO Cabal et al. got to the TPE people is certainly worth an American Spectator article (NRO would never write it! -- not anymore). Are you reading this, Emmett Tyrrell?