Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez recently called for Republicans to agree on an immigration reform plan at the Ripon Society’s 2014 Legislative and Communications Directors Symposium on Leadership.
Immigration reform could be a boon for the economy, Gutierrez said, because with the working-age population currently growing at approximately 0.5 percent, not enough workers are being added to the workforce to support economic growth.
“For every 100 immigrants that come to the country, we create 40 jobs for American citizens,” Gutierrez said. “Twenty-five percent of all startups are done by immigrants. What drives the economy is startups. So the pipeline of future new business is not very robust because people are afraid. There is no certainty. They feel it’s an anti-business climate – why would you create new business? Fifty percent of all new jobs are created by businesses that are less than five years old. New businesses and immigrants are a driver of that….”
Immigrants are needed to fill high-skill and lower-skill areas alike, Gutierrez said, but immigration legislation approved by the Senate last summer would establish low quotas for the number of unskilled immigrants who can enter the country to work.
Having a plan for Immigration reform would be a good political move for Republicans, Gutierrez said.
“The Republicans lost the Hispanic vote, we all know that,” Gutierrez said. “But what is not talked about enough is that we lost the Asian-American vote by a wider margin. That’s incredible. It’s unexplainable. And if you look across different groups, we’re losing the immigrant vote. Not because immigrants don’t like our policies – they do. They come here to work and create something they couldn’t do back home. The problem is that they perceive that we don’t like them….”
Republicans should be going into communities and doing outreach to explain free enterprise, where to find good jobs, taxes and small business principles, Gutierrez said.