原文:
Crovitz: The Economics of Immigration
Adding more skilled workers would bring in an estimated $100 billion in
federal revenues over a decade, largely from increased income taxes.
By L. GORDON CROVITZ
Columnist's name
For the first time in a generation, the debate over immigration has turned
to the opportunities, not the burdens. Washington might finally deliver
immigration reform, especially as politicians realize that adding more
skilled workers is the fastest way to boost the economy and avoid a fiscal
crisis.
Silicon Valley is the poster child for today's dysfunctional immigration
policy. Foreign technologists trained in the U.S. are routinely denied work
visas and return home to become successful entrepreneurs in China and India.
For many years, half of Silicon Valley startups have had an immigrant
founder, but this trend is in decline as fewer foreigners can find a
foothold on the path to citizenship.
Steve Jobs famously turned against Barack Obama in 2011 when the president
wouldn't sponsor a law to award work visas to foreigners who earn advanced
degrees in technology and the sciences, despite the shortage of native-born
skilled workers. "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us
reasons why things can't get done," Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson. "
It infuriates me."
The last time the U.S. reformed immigration policy was in 1986, when
President Reagan created a political coalition by focusing on immigrants as
assets, not as liabilities, a sharp contrast with Mitt Romney's suggestion
last year that they should pursue "self-deportation." President Obama last
week embraced postelection bipartisan reform in a speech using the words "
economy" or "economic" 10 times. Immigration, he said, "keeps our workforce
young; it keeps our country on the cutting edge." Sending skilled graduates
back home "is not how you grow new industries in America. That's how you
give new industries to our competitors. That's why we need comprehensive
immigration reform."
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We also need a comprehensive rethinking of the purpose of the immigration
laws. It's not widely understood that for more than a century the main goal
of the immigration laws has been to set racial and ethnic quotas—not to
attract the best and brightest from around the world.
Since 1899, immigrants have been designated by "race or people." Until the
1920s, there were few limits aside from the ban on laborers under the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. That changed with the Immigration Act of 1924
, which created the federal Quota Board to "preserve the ideal of American
homogeneity" by setting quotas that favored Protestant Europeans. "The
calculus of numerical restriction in the 1920s was aimed at engineering the
racial composition of the nation; it had nothing to do with the economics of
absorption," wrote historian Mae Ngai in her 2004 book on immigration
policy, "Impossible Subjects."
Many parts of the immigration system are still based on quotas. Visas for
permanent residency are capped, so that no country can have more than 7%
each year. There is an annual limit of 140,000 green cards for employment-
based immigrants, so the ceiling means that while immigrants from small
countries like Belgium and Guinea have a good chance, the waiting list for
citizens of populous countries like China and India can last for decades.
More broadly, of all the developed countries, the U.S. puts the lowest
priority on potential economic benefits when reviewing prospective
immigrants, according to Pia Orrenius, an economist with the Federal Reserve
Bank of Dallas. She estimates that of the 1.1 million green cards issued
every year, 85% are to family members or for humanitarian purposes. Only 15%
are for highly skilled immigrants based on employment, and half of those go
to the workers' spouses and children. Australia, Britain and Canada are
outcompeting the U.S. for skilled people by using a point system based on
immigrants' education and ability to invest or start companies.
The parts of the U.S. system that are designed to boost the economy need
updating. The H-1B visa program, established in 1990, creates 65,000 visas a
year for highly skilled workers. But the demand for skilled technologists
has grown so much since then that in some years this quota has been filled
within hours. No wonder Steve Jobs was impatient.
Smarter immigration policy would give less-skilled immigrants a path to
citizenship that could include language and civics requirements. The
Congressional Budget Office estimates that legalizing the estimated 11
million illegal immigrants in the U.S. would boost revenues by $48 billion
over 10 years while costing $23 billion in increased public services.
Former CBO official Arlene Holen estimates in a Technology Policy Institute
paper that adding more skilled workers would bring in $100 billion in over a
decade, largely from increased income taxes.
It's time to focus on the economic opportunities that immigrants can bring
to the country, regardless of their origin. That would be good both for
American economics and for American values.