The RP: Why Our Economy Demands Immigration Reform

The RP’s latest column for the Huffington Post explains why immigration reform is such an urgent issue for our national economic recovery.  Here’s an excerpt:

When it comes to restoring strong, long-term growth in our nation’s economy, there are few solutions more practical, bi-partisan, and urgent than immigration reform.

Our current immigration system is rigid, outdated, and simply unable to keep up with demands of the new global marketplace. For our nation to thrive and transcend international competition in the 21st century economy, it is incumbent for us to build an immigration system that welcomes people who share our values, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit that has made our country great.

No one can doubt that we are a nation whose foundation was built by immigrants. But did you know that more than 40 percent of today’s Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant, or a child of an immigrant? Or that more than 75 percent of all the patents received by the top ten U.S. universities in 2011 had an immigrant inventor? While we celebrate our nation’s first immigrants every Thanksgiving — and while many of us cherish the stories shared by our own family members who made the pilgrimage to our shores — we too often forget that today, and every day, recent immigrants continue to play a vital role in the American economy.

Unfortunately, far too often, our immigration policies drive too many foreign-born entrepreneurs and job creators away, even after we have trained them and given them degrees from American universities.

This is not simply a matter of compassion or human interest. This is about the very survival of our economy, way of life, and continued global leadership. We must make it easier for foreign-born, U.S.-educated students to get visas. We must create a startup visa program for entrepreneurs and innovators who want to come to our country to start businesses and hire American workers, especially when they already have U.S. investors to back their ideas. We must be doing everything we can to keep that capital in the U.S., rather than handing the next great idea over to our competitors.

Click here to read the full column.