Gordon Crovitz writing in the Wall Street Journal this week argued for increased immigration to stimulate the economy. Frankly his argument makes no sense to me. If he were arguing for allowing some of the world’s best and brightest, then that makes some sense but he also argues for more unskilled laborers and amnesty for the illegal aliens already here. Read his whole argument, here. And consider it in light of yesterday’s post on the CIS study about the very high levels of unemployment among immigrants in the US right now—even the highly educated are not working.
One thing (of many things he said!) that I found puzzling was this comment:
It usually pays to be skeptical about immigration reform, given the alliance between nativists and labor unions for tighter borders. Still, an economic downturn is the right time to move on immigration, one of the few policy tools that could clearly boost growth.
I don’t know what alliance he is talking about, we see labor unions eager to get immigrant labor members. The SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is organizing Somalis as just one example.