In a major speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the United States risks “national suicide” if it doesn’t adopt a more welcoming immigration policy.
“We will not remain a global superpower if we continue to close our doors to people who want to come here to work hard, start businesses, and pursue the American dream,” Bloomberg said.
“The American dream cannot survive if we keep telling the dreamers to go elsewhere,” the mayor adds. “It’s what I call national suicide – and that’s not hyperbole.”
Immigration reform, he argues, is the key to creating new jobs and setting the economy on a steady path into the future.
Bloomberg’s speech comes as the Partnership for a New American Economy, of which he is a co-chair, releases a report looking at the role that immigrants play at Fortune 500 companies and the potential. Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, the report notes. Together, the companies employ more than 10 million people worldwide and generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion.
But there is the potential, the report says, that the major corporations of the future may be created beyond U.S. shores unless there is major reform of the country’s immigration laws.
“Every day that we fail to fix our broken immigration laws is a day that we inflict a wound on our economy,” Bloomberg says in his speech. “Today, we may have turned away the next Albert Einstein or Sergey Brin. Tomorrow, we may turn away the next Levi Strauss or Jerry Yang.”
Immigration reform has the potential to create jobs, Bloomberg says, and is also an area where there could be bipartisan agreement, though previous efforts at comprehensive immigration reform or piecemeal changes have stalled.
“Immigration reform would be an economic engine for the entire country — creating good-paying jobs that will speed up our recovery,” says the mayor, an independent. “Both major political parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue say that restoring economic growth is their top priority. And it must be.”
The federal government, he says, must introduce a pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million people in the country who entered illegally or overstayed visas. He’d also like to the an increase on the number of H1-B visas awarded by the government.
With the 2012 presidential election less than 18 months away, Bloomberg acknowledges that both sides may “use the stalemate as a wedge issue to score political points.”
Instead, though, he’d like to see Republicans and Democrats come together to “adopt immigration reforms that will spur new companies, strengthen existing ones, and help create jobs for the 13.9 million Americans who are unemployed and looking for work.”
“Maybe more than any other major issue in Washington today, there is an opportunity for a bipartisan breakthrough on immigration,” Bloomberg concludes.” If both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue seize it – and it’s up us to push them – we can help get our economy moving again, and the best days for our country – and for the dreamers who define it – will be still to come.”
