Partnership for a New American Economy

Fox News Latino
May 10, 2012

The corner of East Third Street and Bell in Dayton’s East End offers a view of what happens when the American Dream leaves town.

Paints peels off the wood siding of vacant homes. Feral cats roam among the overgrown weeds and ivy that have overtaken a crumbling parking lot. A graffiti-covered restaurant sits in a state of decay. In the surrounding neighborhood homes stand empty, windows covered by plywood and “No Trespassing” signs stapled to the front doors.

The East End is one of many neighborhoods throughout the city, and the Rust Belt as a whole, that have fallen on hard times in the wake of the population loss and the departure of manufacturing jobs.

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National Journal
May 10, 2012

Slowly — very slowly — America is getting back to work. And when you look at the representation of foreign-born workers across our economy, it is clear America remains a nation of immigrants.

Shoulder to shoulder, generations of Americans stand with families of new Americans, their collective prosperity depending on immigrants and immigration to the United States.

Increasingly, a skilled home health care aide from Vietnam will be just as important to our elderly as a skilled physician from Colombia. But the U.S. immigration debate focuses on the “high-skilled” worker.

This narrowing of the debate undermines the value of work. It does so by creating a double-edged sword that separates the contributions of “high-skilled” and “low-skilled” workers, which deepens social and economic divides across all communities.

Evidence is building that this separation is misguided. The Brookings Institution and the Partnership for a New American Economy recently released an eye-opening study showing the importance of immigrant workers across the economic spectrum.

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Des Moines Register
May 9, 2012

The political discussion surrounding immigration often focuses on border security, deportation and amnesty. Lost in the debate is the critical need to reform legal immigration so that we can create more U.S. jobs.

Our country has long embraced legal immigrants who are truly the best and the brightest in their fields. These immigrants start companies and create jobs for U.S. citizens.

Successful immigrants have helped to form our U.S. culture.

Levi Strauss came from Germany and founded the clothing company that carries his name. Andrew Carnegie came from Scotland and created a steel industry legacy. An Wang came from China and started an early computer company. Yahoo was co-founded by U.S.-educated Jerry Yang, who migrated from Taiwan. David Ho came to the U.S. unable to speak English, but today is a U.S.-educated, world-renowned medical researcher. Physicist Albert Einstein and publisher Joseph Pulitzer both immigrated to the U.S. and have left lasting legacies woven into our culture.

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Center for an Urban Future
May 2012

[Excerpts from report]

...

"In just a few short years, New York’s tech sector has emerged as an increasingly powerful economic driver for the city. At a time when few other industries were growing in New York, more than a thousand new tech start-ups were formed in the city. This burst of tech company formation has created thou- sands of good paying jobs in the five boroughs, attracted large amounts of capital from outside the city, pumped new life in the city’s entrepreneurial economy, and lured some of the world’s smartest and most innovative people to New York at a time when the most competitive cities are the ones with the best hu- man capital and greatest capacity for innovation."

...

"By far the most immediate and effective rem- edy for the city’s engineering talent gap would be to streamline the visa process and dramatically raise the federal cap on highly qualified immi- grants.Whether they are just starting out or trying to scale up to meet demand, literally hundreds of tech companies in New York struggle needlessly because of federal visa issues. In our interviews, nearly every executive who was hiring top level staff could describe in excruciating detail the kinds of problems visa issues presented."

"Given the backlog on green cards, entrepreneurial engineers who rely on the sponsorship of their current company something all H1B visas require can’t break away to start their own companies in the U.S. “There’s a hidden cost,” notes Gilt’s Kevin Ryan. 'The guy I employ to come here, there’s a good chance he’s going to want to start another company after being here for a few years.'"