Partnership for a New American Economy

USA Today
November 23, 2012

House Republicans still smarting from their poor showing among Hispanics in the presidential election are planning a vote next week on immigration legislation that would both expand visas for foreign science and technology students and make it easier for those with green cards to bring their immediate families to the U.S.

Republican leaders made it clear after the election that the party was ready to get serious about overhauling the nation's dysfunctional immigration system, a top priority for Hispanic communities. Taking up what is called the STEM Jobs Act during the lame-duck session could be seen as a first step in that direction.

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The Wall Street Journal
November 22, 2012

A coalition of entrepreneurs, investors and advocacy groups is pressing its campaign for a special visa that would allow foreigners who launch companies to stay in the U.S.

The group hopes to avoid situations like the one faced by Asaf Darash. Mr. Darash, 38 years old, who was born in Israel and raised there and in Australia, started software firm Regpack Inc. after moving to the U.S. in 2010. He entered the country on a J-2 visa associated with his wife's research in an academic exchange program.

In April, his company applied for an H-1B visa—a type for foreign employees of companies in the U.S.—for Mr. Darash to stay and build his company. Regpack employs 15 people at its San Francisco headquarters.

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ABC News Univision
November 19, 2012

Leaders from both parties are talking about immigration reform as a central issue in 2013. Among other things, such a bill could potentially legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the shadows.

How would that impact the economy?

There are a few different opinions out there.

To begin with, there is no certainty that a reform bill will materialize or, if it does, what it will look like. But there are some existing reports that, based on hypothetical scenarios, give an estimate.

"I wouldn't get too wedded to any particular or exact number, but I think you can learn a lot from the approach of going ahead and trying to make a projection," said David Dyssegaard Kallick, a senior fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization that studies immigration and the economy. "You can see the magnitude of things."

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That includes John Feinblatt, the chief policy advisor for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose Partnership for a New American Economy has done it's own body of research on the impact of reform.

"There's a pretty straightforward explanation for this," Feinblatt, said. "The act of immigration itself is an entrepreneurial act. Picking up your things, leaving your relatives behind and coming to a new country is about wanting something better for yourself."

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The New York Times
November 17, 2012

Funny how quickly some principles collapse when given the right kind of shove. One day, the Republican Party is rock-ribbed restrictionist, dedicated to the proposition that unauthorized immigrants are an invading army of job stealers, welfare moochers and criminals whose only acceptable destiny is to be caught and deported — the border fence forever, “amnesty” never. The next day: never mind. The party suddenly discovers the merits of a working immigration system. Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who once bravely supported bipartisan reform but slunk away late in the last Bush administration, are scratching at the door again, as if the last five years never happened.

All it took was an election in which millions of Latino voters — many of them the wives and husbands, sons, daughters, grandchildren, cousins, co-workers and friends of those despised “illegals” — overwhelmingly chose President Obama over the man who promised to be deporter in chief. They rejected Mitt Romney by 3 to 1, according to exit polls. Asian-Americans did, too. Republicans looked at a changing America, saw a future of decline and irrelevance for the party, and concluded that immigrants weren’t so bad after all.

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