American Dreams (7 page)

Last but certainly not least, winning the global competition for investment and innovation will require us to win the global competition for talent. We simply cannot remain competitive in the twenty-first century if we are unable to attract and keep the most talented people in the world.

For as long as there has been an America, we have benefited from the infusion of entrepreneurs, innovators, workers and dreamers who have come to this country from other lands. But today, at a time when so many working-class and middle-class families are struggling, it can fairly be asked: Is it possible to advocate continued immigration while at the same time fighting for an agenda to lift up the working and middle classes? Aren't these two things at odds with each other? Well, the answer is yes—if we continue on the path we're on.

To begin with, our immigration system itself is chaotic. Entire sectors of our southern border are not secure, creating not just an immigration problem but a serious humanitarian and national security one as well. Last summer's crisis of thousands of unaccompanied minors entering this country proves that both our borders and our immigration system can be overwhelmed very quickly. In addition, many of our immigration laws are simply not enforced or unenforceable. For example, a significant percentage of those here illegally arrived legally, but then overstayed visas. We do not know who most of them are or where they are.

Our immigration system, designed primarily to reunite families, is an outdated relic of the last century. This system worked for much of the twentieth century, when we had no shortage of low-skill, middle-income jobs and the government safety net was still fairly limited. But today we have low to nonexistent growth, a shortage of good jobs and a massive web of needs-based programs.

No nation on earth is more generous when it comes to immigration than America. Each year about one million people permanently immigrate here legally. But when people hear that we have over twelve million people here illegally, they feel as if we are being taken advantage of. They see how hard it is to find and keep a steady and well-paying job, and they worry that more people will mean more competition for already scarce work. That's not nativism. That's human nature.

It does not have to be this way. We
can
have an America in which a thriving middle class coexists with continued, orderly, legal immigration.

We must begin by reigniting economic growth and opportunity in this nation. When our economy is growing and thriving, employment isn't a zero-sum game. A new American's gain does not have to be an existing American's loss. If that were true, every time we hand out a high school or college diploma to one person we should hand an unemployment check to someone else. In fact, the opposite is true.

That's why, just as in all the other conservative reforms discussed in this book, having an immigration system that works for our country begins with economic growth. Indeed, instead of being an impediment to equal opportunity and widely shared prosperity, the right immigration system is a critical component of economic growth. One study by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin found that if we modernized our immigration system from a family-based one to one focused on merit and productivity, we could grow the economy by almost a full percentage point in the near term and raise per capita growth by over $1,500.

Our current system is damaging our economy. Each year our colleges and universities graduate foreign students who are among the best and the brightest in the whole world. Instead of putting them to work here, innovating products and creating jobs, we send them back to China and India to compete against us. This makes no sense. If one of our college graduates is a world-class basketball player, there is little doubt he will wind up staying to play in the NBA. But if he or she is a world-class scientist, we make them leave!

Making our legal immigration system a merit-based system that encourages innovators will have broad benefits for our economy. Studies show, for example, that 40 percent of American Fortune 500 firms were started by immigrants. What's more, roughly half of the most successful start-ups in Silicon Valley were started by people who weren't born in this country. And since 2000—despite the restrictions we have on merit-based immigration—over a third of the American Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine and physics have been immigrants. This kind of scientific and entrepreneurial activity generates jobs across the income spectrum—from corner-suite executives to construction workers and IT engineers. Just the kind of jobs that help Americans rise to the middle class and beyond.

Transitioning to a merit-based, high-skilled immigration system would also help immigrants assimilate more quickly and easily into American economic and civil life. As reform conservative authors Yuval Levin and Reihan Salam have written, a merit-based system—in conjunction with formal civic education requirements, such as a test on American history and government before being granted a green card—would have the effect of allowing immigrants to integrate more successfully into American communities and reduce the isolation and poverty of many of today's immigrant communities.

The benefits of a merit-based legal immigration system are widely (although not universally) accepted in America. So why, then, has nothing been done about it? The reason is our illegal immigration problem. We will never have the votes needed in Congress to modernize any part of our immigration system until the issue of illegal immigration is adequately dealt with first.

A significant percentage of Americans simply don't trust either party in Washington to address other aspects of immigration reform before illegal immigration has been brought under control, and for good reason. The immigration reform law of 1986 legalized more than three million people who were here illegally, but the enforcement measures were never fully implemented. For years President Obama, his allies in Congress and many immigration reform supporters have told us that the border was “as secure as ever.” This fallacy was dramatically exposed when portions of our southern border were essentially overrun in the early part of 2014. Then there are the numerous examples of President Obama simply ignoring, suspending, rewriting and violating the law through executive action. All of these things have left many to conclude that, no matter what enforcement mechanisms are written into law, this administration will simply ignore them. The result is a stalemate on an issue of critical importance.

So what is the way forward? First, we must make the argument that reform is needed at all. I have heard some argue that all we need to do is enforce the laws we have already. But that is not accurate. On the enforcement side, we need additional investment in electronic monitoring and personnel. Building more fencing alone will not be enough to address illegal crossings. We also need to give employers a reliable way to check the legal status of the people they hire. We need to invest in an entry and exit tracking system to prevent visa overstays. All of this would require reform.

How do we achieve this reform, given the current stalemate? We must begin by acknowledging that, considering our recent experience with massive pieces of legislation, achieving comprehensive reform of anything in a single bill is simply not realistic. Having tried that approach, I know this to be true firsthand. The fear that such massive pieces of legislation include some clever loophole or unintended consequence makes it even harder to achieve. The only way we are going to be able to break this impasse and make progress on this issue is in a sequential and piecemeal way, with a series of bills that build upon one another until ultimately we have put in place the kind of immigration system our nation needs.

The first step must be enforcement measures that are effective and verifiable. Such measures would include securing the most vulnerable and most trafficked sectors of the southern border, mandatory E-Verify and the full implementation of an entry-exit tracking system.

The second step is to modernize our legal immigration system toward a merit-based one. That would mean reassigning existing visas away from family-based immigration and toward work- and skill-based immigration, passing reforms for high-tech visas, as well as creating a limited guest worker program for seasonal workers in the agricultural sector to reduce the incentive for these workers to come here illegally in the future.

Once both of these reforms have been passed, then I believe the conditions will be in place to address the most politically sensitive aspect of immigration reform: what to do with more than twelve million people currently here illegally.

On the one hand, calls to grant amnesty to twelve million people are unrealistic and quite frankly irresponsible. On the other hand, not a single opponent of the Senate bill I helped author proposed that we try to round up and deport twelve million human beings. So how do we deal with this dilemma? I believe that if the enforcement measures are in place, there exists a path forward that would obtain a significant majority in Congress and the support of a majority of Americans across the political spectrum. It consists of three parts.

First, those here illegally must come forward and be registered. If they have committed serious crimes or have not been here long enough, they will have to leave. With the new E-Verify system in place, they are going to find it difficult to find a job in any case.

Second, those who qualify would be allowed to apply for a temporary nonimmigrant visa. To obtain it they will have to pay an application fee and a fine, undergo a background check and learn English. Once they receive this work permit, they would be allowed to work legally and travel. To keep it, they will have to pay taxes. They would not qualify for government programs like Obamacare, welfare or food stamps. And if they commit a crime while in this status, they would lose their permit.

Third and finally, those who qualify for a nonimmigrant visa will have to remain in this status for at least a decade. After that, they would be allowed to apply for permanent residency if they so choose. Many who qualify for this status will choose to remain in it indefinitely. But those who choose to seek permanent residency would have to do it the way anyone else would, not through any special pathway.

This three-step plan is not only the best way to reform our immigration system, it is, in my opinion, the only approach that has any chance of success. An overwhelming majority of Americans in both parties would support this sort of incremental approach. Of course, there will be detractors. Some will continue to call for less immigration and more deportations. On the left, some will continue to demand an all-at-once-or-nothing-at-all approach.

Just like saving Medicare and Social Security, immigration reform is a powerful political issue. Some on the right know it needs to be done, but they want someone else to do it. Some on the left have concluded that having the issue is more politically valuable than solving the problem. Groups on both sides use it to raise money.

In the end, immigration reform is fundamentally about reforming government and restoring the American people's faith in the ability of their government to do basic things right. I don't believe this challenge will be fully met until we have new leaders in Washington who support both the rule of law and the job-creating potential of the free market. Until then, the best way to rebuild trust and reform our broken immigration system is through incremental steps both to fix our immigration system and to realize the full potential of our country.

Why? Because the American Dream is not small. It's not about entitlement. It's about opportunity. It is not about parceling out prosperity to the few. It is about a striving, growing prosperity for anyone willing to work hard and to dream. Conservatives have always been the keeper of this flame. We have always been the believers in a growing, striving America. It is a tragedy that today we find ourselves being portrayed as pessimists about America's potential rather than the optimists we have always been. We will miss a great opportunity to reclaim the true meaning of our movement—and, much more important, to restore the true potential of our country—if we fail to act.