Partnership for a New American Economy

Forbes
November 10, 2012

Let me try, very very quickly to put the case for high-skilled immigration into current GOP rhetoric: high-skilled immigration is importing more makers. If you see the country as approximately divided this way, and believe that the greater proportion of takers we have the worse things are, then you should embrace policies that increase the proportion of the country that is makers. High-skilled immigrants are makers under this dichotomy. They create jobs and start businesses, they pay more in taxes than they get back, they are highly employed, they have high IQs, their children generate positive spillovers in the local schools, into which they also pay property taxes.

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The Hill
November 9, 2012

The results of Tuesday’s election did not change the structural environment in Washington – voters chose to reelect President Obama and return a Democratic majority to the Senate and a Republican majority to the House of Representatives. Most of the same players will return to most of the same positions when the President and Congress are sworn into office in January.

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The first order of business for Congress and the President following the 2012 election is to address the looming fiscal crises. Tuesday’s results, however, indicate that comprehensive immigration reform may not be far behind. Passage of bipartisan, high-skilled immigration legislation would be a great way to kick-start the effort.

“I have to believe this will be okay as well,” he said.

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Huffington Post
November 9, 2012

Asaf Darash, an Israeli entrepreneur, was putting his 18-month-old son to bed when he received the news he had been dreading. He had applied to renew his temporary visa back in April. It was now the middle of September, a few weeks away from his visa expiration, and immigration officials had still not responded. As he watched his son fall asleep, he opened an urgent email from his attorney. His application was denied. He faced deportation.

So why, when both sending and receiving countries benefit, is the quest for comprehensive immigration reform in the United States so politically divisive and often pushed to the legislative back burner?

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“Every entrepreneur is sort of delusional with how optimistic he is because that’s what you need to be,” he said. “You’re taking something that everybody is telling you ‘No, it won’t work, it’s impossible,’ and you’re doing it anyway. You have to believe it will be okay because otherwise we would never build companies. We would never go and do crazy stuff that makes a difference in the world.”

“I have to believe this will be okay as well,” he said.
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Los Angeles Times
November 9, 2012

They design our electronics, harvest our food, staff our research labs and care for our children. Immigrants -- legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled -- by all accounts are vital cogs in the wheel of the U.S. economy, and the money they send back to their families improves the quality of life throughout their homelands.

So why, when both sending and receiving countries benefit, is the quest for comprehensive immigration reform in the United States so politically divisive and often pushed to the legislative back burner?

Immigration policy experts say the caustic partisan debate over who can stay and who must go has been ratcheted up by the lingering joblessness inflicted by the Great Recession and the searing spotlight of Campaign 2012 that illuminated only candidates' points of contention rather than those of convergence.

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The Huffington Post
November 8, 2012

American voters chose to renew their contract with a President whose vision of economic vitality involves three distinct pillars -- innovation, education and rebuilding of America's infrastructure. Nearly two years ago, during his 2011 State of the Union address, Mr. Obama, speaking eloquently of this generation's "Sputnik Moment," recognized that immigration reform was key to this goal and declared he was "prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows."

By reelecting President Obama and, at the same time, retaining a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the American people -- including a whopping 70-plus percent plus of Latino voters -- have directed both parties to work together to implement Mr. Obama's vision. The electorate spoke loud and clear Tuesday, ordering Washington to put aside partisan politics and overhaul America's broken immigration system so that our families remain safe and together, our businesses regain their competitive edge in the global economy and due process is restored and protected. Amid the incessant post-election punditry and analysis one thing is crystal clear; the American people have demanded positive immigration solutions and an end to the anti-immigrant/Latino extremism that has polluted the immigration debate.

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Bloomberg Businessweek
November 8, 2012

Having helped power President Barack Obama to victory over Mitt Romney, Hispanic voters are suddenly the “it” demographic in U.S. politics.

Hispanics made up 10 percent of the total vote and gave Obama almost three votes for every one earned by Romney. Obama may even have won a majority among Florida’s Cuban voters, who were once a Republican mainstay. With more than 60,000 Hispanics turning 18 every month between now and 2016, we doubt many Republicans are still in denial about the demographic hole they’ve dug for themselves. The question is, what will they do about it?

Obama has every incentive to pursue comprehensive immigration reform to provide pathways to legal status and citizenship for the nation’s roughly 11 million illegal immigrants. He has campaigned for it, and a crucial constituency demands it.

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The Washington Post
November 8, 2012

Silicon Valley contributed more to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign than Wall Street and Hollywood, according to a Nov. 3 San Francisco Chronicle report. The Valley contributed $14.7 million compared to $14.5 million from New York City and $6.3 million from the Beverly Hills crowd. The data were compiled for the Chronicle by the nonpartisan organization MapLight.org. During his many trips to Silicon Valley, the President made a number of promises. Now that he has won, the Valley expects him to keep his end of the bargain.

I asked several notable people in Silicon Valley what they want from Congress and Obama’s second-term administration. The tech moguls I spoke to or exchanged e-mails with include Marc Andreesen, Paul Graham, Heidi Roizen, Ron Conway, Vinod Khosla, Carl Bass, Dan’l Lewin and Jason Calacanis. The bloggers who gave me feedback include Eric Eldon, Dan Lyons, and Om Malik. And I spoke to several of my colleagues at Stanford Law School including Joe Grundfest, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, and Dan Siciliano. Here, Mr. President, is their wish list:

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India Times
November 8, 2012

BANGALORE: The Indian IT industry would have preferred not to have another four years of Barack Obama, having been at the receiving end of higher visa fees, lawsuits on misuse of visas and general anti-offshoring rhetoric during his first tenure. But some veterans said the Indian IT sector was "too big and too important" to the US to be affected much by whatever Obama now does.

IT industry body Nasscom's president Som Mittal said Indian tech services firms help the US to become more efficient and competitive. "And they have a shortage of skills. There is now growing realization that we are part of the solution (to the US's problems)," he said. He has some statistics to bear him out. In May this year, a group called the Partnership for A New American Economy, backed by US technology industry bigwigs, released a report that said that if the US did not adjust its immigration policies to make it easier for foreign born technology workers to reside in the country, it could fall behind the rest of the world in growth and innovation.

The argument was based on the finding that the demand by US companies for talent with degrees in STEM (science, technology , engineering and math) was rising three times faster than jobs in the rest of the economy , but these positions were "the hardest to fill because of the dearth of native-born Americans with these degrees" . The report said the US would face a shortage of 224,000 hi-tech workers by 2018.

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Quartz
November 7, 2012

It’s time for US President Barack Obama to think big. Syria’s civil war and Iran’s nuclear capability will continue to give the president plenty of opportunities to make his mark on history in foreign affairs. But the hope of any further major achievement in domestic policy will have to overcome two hard realities: Republican control of the House of Representatives and aging Americans’ effect on the federal budget.

What the president needs is some form of political jujitsu that also solves the country’s long-term budget problems. Meanwhile, one of the biggest messages for Republicans from this election is that their electoral prospects hinge on bringing a larger fraction of Hispanics into the GOP fold. So immigration is an issue that puts them in a box: either they play ball, or they get tarred further as the anti-immigration party, which is politically deadly.

Now is the perfect time for the president to tackle immigration reform. He already has put immigration reform on the agenda, but there is a danger that he will think too small and miss the potential of the right kind of immigration reform to strengthen the economy and shore up the long-run government budget. But the key to the economic and budgetary magic of immigration reform is to dramatically increase the level of legal immigration allowed each year.

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Forbes
November 7, 2012

What’s fascinating about presidential elections—perhaps more than any other event—is the way that intelligent people can view the same set of facts and see totally different things. Not a day has passed since Barack Obama’s re-election, and already the pundits are out in force.

Some say Obama’s diverse “rainbow coalition” marks the demographic transformation of America, where aging white men make up an increasingly smaller share of the electorate. Others say it is about wedge issues, like immigration, that appeal to key interest groups like Hispanics. Still others say it is about class warfare, between the haves (who built America) and the have nots (who want their piece of the pie).

These perspectives all share something in common: they view American politics as a war between competing factions, which is of course what our founders expected. Geeks can dust off their copies of The Federalist Papers, No. 10, for a reminder.

But there’s something else, which I think the pundits are largely missing. There is a bigger, underlying force at work. And that is the realization, among an increasing number of Americans, that diversity is not just good politics. It is, in fact, good economics. It seems that Obama’s ability to tap into that emerging worldview, at least in large part, helped build his electoral coalition last night.

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