President Trump and Congress should approve new laws to boost legal immigration to strengthen the US economy and workforce in the coming decades now that the border is secure, a new study said.
“Immigrants are likely to be more valuable than ever in achieving higher economic growth over the next several decades,” according to analysis by the right-leaning group Unleash Prosperity.
The report recommends increasing the overall quota for annual immigration entries and expanding visas for high-tech foreign workers via the H-1B visa program.
It also calls for expanding visas that allow companies to hire foreigners for seasonal work.
“Due to profound demographic changes in the United States, expanding visas for programs ranging from high-tech H-1B workers, to seasonal H-2B workers, to EB-5 investor immigrants, combined with an increase in the overall quota for annual immigrant entries will benefit the U.S. economy,” the study insisted.
Doing so will counter the demographic cycle of fewer young Americans entering the workforce and more Baby Boomers retiring and exiting the workforce.
The study, co-authored by Richard Vedder, Matthew Denhart and Stephen Moore, comes as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on illegal immigration by tightening enforcement at the southern border and detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.
Unleashed Prosperity was co-founded by Moore, an economic adviser who helped craft President Trump’s and the GOP’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” of 2017, which expires at year’s end.
Other co-founders include Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and former Republican candidate for president; economist Arthur Laffer and free market analyst Phil Kerpen.
It has received funding from heavy hitters, including Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, who died over the weekend at age 80, the company said.
Moore praised the Trump administration’s actions that have ended massive border jumping and illegal immigration, making it timely to talk about expanding legal immigration.
“The reason why we did the study is the border is secure. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do immigration. Americans will be supportive of doing it the right way,” he said Sunday.
The report cited data justifying the need to significantly raise legal immigration quotas:
- Immigrants of working age are more likely to be employed than native-born Americans — 65% compared to 60%.
- Immigrants account for half the growth of the workforce over the past decade, and more are of prime working age than American-born residents.
- Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies in America were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
- Three of the “Magnificent Seven” American tech companies were born in other nations: Elon Musk of Tesla, X and SpaceX was born in South Africa; Sundar Pichai, born in India, is the CEO of Alphabet (Google); and NVIDIA leader Jensen Huang came from Taiwan.
- Over the 20-year period 2020-2040, all of the net growth of the American labor force will be attributable to immigrant workers.
“Over the past decade, immigrants have filled nearly 40% of the new jobs in America. It would be hard to argue this has displaced Americans from jobs, because the unemployment rate has remained relatively low,” the authors said.
Since 1994, the proportion of foreign-born workers in the labor force nearly doubled, to 18.6% in 2023.
In recent decades, the US has had higher economic growth rates than Western Europe and Canada, the report said.
“The extraordinary increase in productive resources — disproportionately immigrants — has given the United States a competitive edge,” the report said.
The report notes the declining birth rate in the US. Women averaged giving birth to more than three children in the 1960s, now they average fewer than two. That’s not enough to maintain the population absent more international migration, the report said.
“Modern-day America was founded and settled by immigrants. They turned a largely uninhabited and poor land into a thriving large nation of unprecedented wealth and accomplishment. Our nation’s ability to absorb immigrants historically has proven rapid and unique among nations,” the report said.
The Trump administration’s goal to grow the economy by 3% a year over the next decade will be difficult to achieve without an ample influx of immigrants to compensate for an aging American-born population, the authors said.
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