INFOGRAPHIC: How Immigration Reform Will Boost The American Economy
bipartisan group of senators this morning introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation that provides a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, as well as reforms to other existing worker and visa programs. The bill would also provide undocumented immigrants with provisional legal status as they wait for citizenship — which will take 13 years under the legislation.
Still, temporary status gives those immigrants the ability to contribute directly to the American economy, and the benefits for the overall economy, including American workers, would be substantial over the next decade, as this infographic from the Center for American Progress shows:
The numbers in the infographic measure the impact of a bill without a path to citizenship in the first 10 years. Legislation that included a faster path to citizenship, as CAP’s Patrick Oakford and Robert Lynch found in a recent study, would provide an even bigger boost to the economy. A five-year path to citizenship, they found, would add $1.1 trillion to the economy over the next decade while increasing Americans’ cumulative income by $618 billion and increasing job growth by 159,000 annually. Still, as the infographic shows, a bill with a slower path to citizenship would still have benefits not just for the undocumented immigrants it helps immediately but for the American economy as well.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/16/1873481/infographic-how-immigration-reform-will-boost-the-american-economy/
