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Intro: Tourism
People come from around the world to visit America’s great landmarks and attractions, generating billions of dollars of economic activity across the country. But the country’s current visa system creates long wait times and costly hurdles, both for eager foreign tourists and temporary immigrant workers in the tourism industry. The average tourist from China spends $6,243 […]
Read MoreIntro: Labor-intensive Industries
Immigrants working in labor-intensive industries are critical to the U.S. economy. The American workforce is becoming older and better educated, with only 7.4 percent of Americans now lacking a high school diploma, compared to over 50 percent in the 1960s. But labor-intensive workers are still needed for industries like manufacturing, agriculture, and construction. Immigrants specializing in […]
Read MoreIntro: Innovation
American innovation is key to our technological achievement. According to a 2012 Partnership study, 76 percent of patents granted to the top U.S. patent-producing universities in 2011 had an immigrant inventor, with inventors originating from 88 different countries. Seventy-nine percent of all pharmaceutical patents were invented or co-invented by a scientist born abroad. A quarter of all […]
Read MoreIntro: Agriculture
Farmers across the country depend on temporary labor to help grow their crops and their businesses. Immigrants help fill these vital positions, creating an additional 2 to 3 jobs for domestic-born workers in industries such as food packaging, shipping, and farming supplies. For many farms across the country, there are simply not enough native-born workers to […]
Read MoreIntro: Entrepreneurship
Immigrants have consistently demonstrated a strong entrepreneurial spirit and propensity to create new businesses. For example, immigrants are more than twice as likely as native-born citizens to start new businesses, and 28 percent of all U.S. companies started in 2011 had immigrant founders – despite immigrants comprising roughly 13 percent of the population. A study from the […]
Read MoreIs a Border Surge the Only Way to Pass Immigration Reform and Ensure Legalization?
During the second full week of debate on S. 744, momentum towards passage increased with a positive CBO score, the defeat of several poison-pill amendments, and the announcement of a Republican border amendment that is thought to bring ten to fifteen Republicans to “yes” on final passage. A series of critical cloture votes is likely […]
Read MoreImmigrants and Their Children Fill Gaps Left by Aging American Workforce
Over the next two decades, as the baby boom generation continues entering retirement, we will experience the largest exodus from the workforce by any generational cohort in American history. This wave of retirees will create a labor force deficit among the millions of jobs baby boomers depart from on top of new job growth industries […]
Read MoreImmigrants Boost U.S. Economic Vitality through the Housing Market
View the interactive map of the findings. New research by Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) and New American Economy (NAE) finds that the 40 million immigrants in the United States have created $3.7 trillion in housing wealth, helping stabilize less desirable communities where home prices are declining or would otherwise have declined. Evidence already […]
Read MoreImmigrants Boost U.S. Economic Vitality through the Housing Market
View the interactive map of the findings. New research by Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) and New American Economy (NAE) finds that the 40 million immigrants in the United States have created $3.7 trillion in housing wealth, helping stabilize less desirable communities where home prices are declining or would otherwise have declined. Evidence already […]
Read MoreThe Power of Reform: CBO Report Quantifies the Economic Benefits of the Senate Immigration Bill
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the fiscal and economic effects of the Senate immigration reform bill (S. 744) would be overwhelmingly positive. If enacted, the bill would help reduce the federal budget deficit by approximately $1 trillion over 20 years, would boost the U.S. economy as whole without negatively affecting U.S. workers, and would greatly reduce future undocumented immigration. These are the conclusions laid out in three reports released in June and July 2013. On June 18, the CBO issued two reports on the version of S. 744 that was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 28. The first one analyzes (or “scores”) the fiscal impact of the bill over the next 20 years and the second one focuses on the impact that some aspects of the bill would have on the U.S. economy. On July 3, the CBO issued a revised score on the version of the bill that passed the Senate on June 27. This version includes the Corker-Hoeven “border surge” amendment, which calls for a significant increase in border-enforcement spending.
What is a CBO score and what are its main implications?
Nearly every bill that is approved by a full committee of either house of Congress is subject to a formal cost estimate by the CBO. The report produced as a result of this analysis is known as the CBO “score.” The purpose of this analysis is to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on a wide assortment of programs covered by the federal budget. In general, the CBO estimates what the net fiscal impact of a bill would be, considering both the costs and the benefits associated with its implementation.
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