WASHINGTON – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg came to Washington Wednesday with a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, calling on Congress to adopt four ideas he believes will speed economic recovery and create jobs.
“As we approach the end of 2011, two things are clear: the American economy remains in serious trouble, and more of the same isn’t doing the trick to keep us out of that,” said Bloomberg, who spoke before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The mayor’s remarks come at a time when unemployment stands at 9.1 percent and Congress is in a deadlock on Capitol Hill over how to solve the jobs crisis.
Bloomberg’s first solution: Visa distribution should be dramatically expanded to high-skilled workers. While 85 percent of visas are granted for migration and family reunification, 15 percent of visas are allocated for economic reasons. Bloomberg said this is sabotaging the economy.
Second, Bloomberg said foreign students earning technical degrees at American universities should be allowed to work in the U.S. “There is no such thing as too many scientists and engineers” he said. “Let’s offer them green cards after they graduate and convince them to stay.”
Next, the mayor believes foreign entrepreneurs who want to start businesses in the U.S. should not be turned away. “These people will hire American workers,” he said. “That’s the solution to unemployment.”
Finally, Bloomberg said Congress should expand and streamline the nation’s tools to attract foreign talent by eliminating the cap on visas and offering start-up capital and tax-breaks for immigrant entrepreneurs. “Why should we care where they come from? They’ll return home to help our competitors,” he said.
Thomas Donohue, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, welcomed Bloomberg. “He’s a proponent of big ideas—go big or go home,” Donohue said of the New York mayor.
Also present at the Chamber was Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. She called immigration an extremely important component of economic growth and agreed with Bloomberg’s ideas for reform.
“When you introduce immigrants into the labor and economy you get more efficiencies, which means more output with fewer resources,” Orrenius said.
Al Martinez-Fonts, executive vice president of the U.S. Forum for Policy Innovation, commended Bloomberg’s effort to push legislative reform to address the economy.
“We are in a global market. This isn’t a closed circuit,” Martinez-Fonts said. “We don’t need to fix it all, but to do nothing is unacceptable.”