The immigration bill passed by the Senate on June 24, 2013 will revolutionize current immigration laws while boosting the economy. The Senate’s immigration bill will increase the number of green cards issued annually from 1 million to 1.5 million, give illegal immigrants a 13 year path to legal citizenship, and nearly double the number of specialty worker visas for.
Opponents to this progressive immigration reform, like Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama, are chiming in with arguments like: “More immigrants means fewer jobs for US citizens” and “Many immigrants come to the US to abuse our welfare and social outreach programs.” Philippe Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (Little Brown, 2007), addresses and disbands these notions in his article “Let Them In!” published by the Intelligent Optimist. Legrain explains immigrants take jobs and make them too, “The problem for immigrants is that while the jobs that they take are visible, the jobs they create for everyone else are largely invisible.” These invisible jobs Legrain is referring to are the unskilled, lower paying jobs often not taken by native citizens. Legrain argues that immigrants create many new jobs through their comprehensive demand of consumer goods and services.
The immigration bill will raise the number of specialty workers allowed to find employment in the US. While rivals of the immigration bill cry foul at these high skilled jobs being taken up by foreign-born nationals, many tech companies are praising this legislation. One of the problems plaguing the tech industry is the lack of specialized workers available in the US right now. With the number of skilled workers added to the job pool once the Senate’s bill becomes a law, this shortage of specialized labor shouldn’t be a problem for much longer.
A timetable for deliberation in the House of Representatives over the Senate’s immigration initiative has not been scheduled yet, but House Republicans are expected to begin discussing it in a closed-door meeting sometime this week. Click here for a full run down of the Senate’s immigration bill.
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Photo: flickr.com/Nevele Otseog