Weekend Reading: Highlights from this week’s immigration news (March 21 – 25)
Date: March 25, 2016
In his March 24 column, the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby argues that mass deportations would leave America poorer. Jacoby cites a 2015 study from the American Action Forum that says it would take 20 years to expel all undocumented immigrants living in the United States and would “cost the federal government at least $400 billion in extra spending. Now, in a new study, the think tank details the enormous increase in resources that would be needed to pull off such a massive population transfer in just two years.”
Another study featured by the Wall Street Journal states that “immigrants started more than half of the current crop of U.S.-based startups valued at $1 billion or more … These 44 companies, the study says, are collectively valued at $168 billion and create an average of roughly 760 jobs per company in the U.S. The study also estimates that immigrants make up over 70 percent of key management or product development positions at these companies.”
While there is evidence that immigrant entrepreneurs are a major boon to the economy, the current political gridlock on immigration reform and current rhetoric of the presidential election are driving American-educated talent to Australia. In fact, according to Jon Marcus in Quartz, there is now a “proposal in Australia to take even further advantage of this by offering visas through a lottery to students trained at U.S. and UK universities and colleges but forced by immigration rules to leave.”
In case you missed it:
Yesterday, Indians and others around the world celebrated Holi, the colorful festival that celebrates the end of winter and the onset of spring. Events around this festival have become commonplace in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and Guyana, among others. The assimilation of this festival into popular American culture is yet another reminder of the many contributions—cultural, political and economic—that immigrants have made in this country. Though Indian Americans constitute only 1.15 percent of the total population, they account for a large portion of America’s overall purchasing power. Learn more here.
