A pro-growth immigration policy
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President-elect Trump's administration will be intently focused on making the U.S. border more secure and deporting people who are in the country illegally, but may prove more open to legal immigration of highly skilled workers.
- Done right, that would be an economic boon, a new paper argues.
Why it matters: The report, out Tuesday morning from the centrist Economic Innovation Group, finds that when some of the world's most talented and entrepreneurial people are allowed into the United States, the results are faster growth, higher wages for native-born citizens, and lower fiscal deficits.
- It is America's "not-so-secret weapon," they write, while identifying numerous weaknesses in current policy that prevent those benefits from fully accruing.
State of play: MAGA world has been roiled in recent weeks by a clash between Trump allies (led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy) who want more legal immigration of highly skilled workers and the nativist right (including Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer) who want less.
- Trump sided with the pro-skilled immigration crowd last month.
- While that conversation specifically focused on the H-1B visas, it implies some broader openness to rethinking how America might open its doors to the world's best and brightest, as Musk and Ramaswamy seek.
By the numbers: The authors calculate that under the current H-1B program, the typical skilled immigrant pays more than $32,000 per year in federal taxes, while consuming only about $3,500 worth of government services.
Zoom in: "Our high-skilled immigration system should be designed first and foremost to advance the national interest of the United States and the interests of its communities and workers," write Adam Ozimek, Connor O'Brien and John Lettieri.
- "Designed well, immigration policy can make our workers more productive, make American industry more globally competitive, spark new growth in left-behind parts of the country, and improve living standards nationwide," they add.
- They argue that the system should be based on bringing in workers with the highest earnings, as opposed to the lottery system used in the H-1B program or offering visas based on education.
- This, they argue, would ensure it's the immigrants with unique skills and the greatest ability to add to economy-wide productivity who are allowed in — not just undercutting wages of native-born workers.
- The authors also advise abandoning quotas by country, further pushing toward a system based on merit that brings in tippy-top talent.
What they're saying: "The fact that the president-elect has reaffirmed his support for high-skilled immigration presents a very interesting moment where what has been an afterthought in our broader immigration has a chance to become a centerpiece, as we think it should be," Lettieri, the president of EIG, tells Axios.
- "There's enormous pressure to turn the tide on the fiscal outlook of the country and to find ways to boost the economy that don't carry a huge price tag," he adds. "There are very few levers to pull that meet those criteria."
