STEPHEN MOORE: America Needs More Legal Immigration, Not Less

STEPHEN MOORE: America Needs More Legal Immigration, Not Less

Aaron Holbrook on March 4, 2024

The most recent polling shows that President Joe Biden’s open border immigration policy is now ranked as the number one or number two problem facing America — in part because of the resulting havoc in our large cities where the millions of migrants are now residing.

If former President Donald Trump wins the election, it will be in no small part due to voter anger with what is now feeling like an unregulated invasion. Americans are a welcoming and generous people — but this policy of laying out a welcome mat to any and everyone who wants to come has stretched the bounds of our compassion to the breaking point.

The vast majority of the current asylum-seekers are not criminals or drug runners or potential terrorists — though some are. Most are simply coming here for the reason our parents and grandparents came: a better life and economic opportunity for themselves and their kids.

They are not villains. They are the victims of Biden’s inhumane and ruinous “let ‘em in” border policy.

It is going to take years — maybe decades — to figure out how we are going to deal with millions of migrants. Biden will not be president and he likely won’t even be alive as we work to undo the damage he’s done to our immigration system.

But there’s an even larger casualty to this mindless policy. Biden has contaminated the historic public support for LEGAL immigration.

And he has done so at the very moment in time we need to continually increase legal visas. Right now America issues roughly two million legal visas a year.

Most economists agree that immigration at this level has been a source of strength for our economy as it allows us to import bright and productive and ambitious people from around the world.

It’s doubtful that the U.S. would have accomplished the commanding heights of technology, medicine, the internet and now artificial intelligence without immigrant talent and brainpower — the “brainiacs” as Larry Kudlow calls them.

But what is also true is that at no time in history have immigrants been more necessary than today. This is because of decades of our lower birth rates.

The number of births per 1,000 people has fallen from 24 in the 1950s to a record low in 2021. The fertility rate for women of child-bearing age has fallen from 3.5 to 1.75 over the past seventy years. A rate of 2.1 is the rate that keeps population size stable.

Immigrants are contributors in many ways — but three stand out as particularly beneficial. First, most immigrants arrive between the ages of 18-35 so the child rearing costs are borne by other nations and they arrive in their prime working years.

Second, immigrants have higher labor force participation rates than most Americans and for the most part they are complementary to rather than in competition with American workers. And third, immigrants have historically higher birth rates than Americans of the same age group.

America currently has between 8 and 10 million job openings. Without immigration it’s going to be difficult to fill those jobs — especially in industries like agriculture, construction, high tech, home services and health care.

It isn’t just a cliche — immigrants fill jobs that Americans often don’t find desirable.

Third, this means that we need to gradually increase legal immigrant visas as soon as possible. We are about the only nation that has the capacity to do this — and to pick and choose who should come.

Trump had a policy proposal that would have shutdown illegal immigration while selectively taking more highly talented legal immigrants. He recognized that you can’t have the public support for valuable legal immigrants before you close off the illegals.

But this brings us back to Biden’s planned chaos border policy.

His policy is hurting everyone: the migrants who are coming illegally, the immigrants who are waiting their turn to come and the American economy by denying our employers the immigrant workers they need.

In short, America needs more legal immigration, not less.

Stephen Moore is an economist with FreedomWorks and co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.