To: The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate
Hearings on the Economic Impact of Significantly More Legal Immigration
We the undersigned ask Senators Grassley and Harkin, and Congressman Latham, to press for congressional hearings on the key fact question driving the immigration debate: will significantly more legal immigration dramatically help our economy, jobs quality, and tax base, as Cato Institute economist Alex Nowrasteh says virtually all economists insist? Or do we already have too much legal immigration which is already driving down wages for high school dropouts, as CIS political scientist Steven Camarota insists? We believe this critical evidence has been ignored during the negotiations that would cap the increase over current immigration quotas at only about 25%.
Why is this important?
The "gang of 8" wants no more than about 25% more future legal immigration than we have now. Calling that "reform" is like saying "we are doing immigrants a great big huge favor, to allow any to come at all." Meanwhile economists are telling us the more legal immigration we allow, the more dramatically our economy will grow; the better jobs there will be for citizens; and the more taxes we will collect towards our crushing deficit. America needs immigrants more desperately than immigrants need America.