Senior Fellow Michael Clemens is quoted in a piece on immigration reform.
Washington won’t get much of a reprieve from verbal pyrotechnics once the drama over the fiscal cliff is over. Up next: Major immigration reform. President Obama has made it clear that a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s badly frayed immigration system is a second-term priority. Many Republican lawmakers are convinced the big take away from the 2012 election results is that conservatives need to rethink their hard-line stance on immigration—including illegal immigrants.
Now, let’s state the obvious. A rapid transformation of illegal immigrants into legal immigrants isn’t in the cards. Amnesty–let alone citizenship–is an anathema to large parts of the electorate. Too bad, since the scholarly evidence is compelling that immigrants–documented or not, legal or illegal—are a net boon to the economy. “Competition fosters economic growth,” says Michael Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington D.C.