Trump and Elon Are Right: Legal Immigrants a Boon to U.S. Economy

Stephen Moore on Dec 31, 2024

The media have been playing up the "civil war" inside the GOP between what Politico calls the "MAGA Republicans and Big Tech." The restrictionists in the party want fewer visas, and the pro-growth wing wants more.

This past weekend, President-elect Donald Trump announced his support for expanding immigrant worker visas. He told the New York Post:

"I've always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them."

It wasn't clear whether he was talking about special visas for seasonal workers or high-tech (H1b) visas. But he has the strategy exactly right: legal immigration, yes; illegal immigration, no.

The evidence is overwhelming that LEGAL immigrants are assets to the economy.

The most recent 2024 report by the Congressional Budget Office on the economic and fiscal impact of immigrants finds that immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in federal services, thus "reducing the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the period 2024-2034."

Despite some traditional nativist concerns that immigrants "take jobs from American workers," the most recent meta-study published in 2020 by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, on balance, immigrants are "job creators, not job takers," as former AOL CEO Steve Case put it. That is because immigrants today as always have high rates of starting businesses, fill niches in the workforce, and create jobs with their purchases of American goods and services.

The nonpartisan American Immigration Council recently found that 45% of American Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants and their children.

The businesses they create are not just in the tech sector. They include retail (Kohl's), telecommunications (Verizon, AT&T), finance (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup), pharmaceuticals (Pfizer, Moderna), media (News Corp, Fox), transportation (Boeing, JetBlue) and petroleum (Phillips 66, Occidental Petroleum), to name a few. And let's not forget Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX.

The revenues of these first- and second-generation immigrant companies exceed that of any other nation.

Musk, who will co-chair the Department of Government Efficiency commission, says he thinks we should double visas for skilled immigrants "yesterday." He added: "The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. ... If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be."

It is clear that hardworking and entrepreneurial immigrants in combination with good old Yankee ingenuity is one of the greatest comparative advantages the United States has over nearly every other nation in the world -- especially China.

I can't think of a better way to make America great again.

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Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is "The Trump Economic Miracle."