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81–372 2013

S. HRG. 113–0047 

IMMIGRATION AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO OUR 

ECONOMIC STRENGTH 

PART I 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 7, 2013 

Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee 

( 
(II) 

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE 

[Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress] 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

KEVIN BRADY, Texas, Chairman 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

SEAN P. DUFFY, Wisconsin 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota 

RICHARD L. HANNA, New York 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

JOHN DELANEY, Maryland 

SENATE 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota, Vice Chair 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

MARK R. WARNER, Virginia 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico 

DAN COATS, Indiana 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

PAT TOOMEY, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT P. O’QUINN, Executive Director 

NILES GODES, Democratic Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OPENING STATEMENTS OF MEMBERS

Hon. Amy Klobuchar, Vice Chair, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota ..................... 1 

Hon. Kevin Brady, Chairman, a U.S. Representative from Texas ...................... 4 

WITNESSES

Dr. Adriana Kugler, Professor, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Washington, DC ............................................................................................................. 5 

Mr. Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 7 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Prepared statement of Vice Chair Klobuchar ....................................................... 36 

Prepared statement of Chairman Brady ............................................................... 37 

Prepared statement of Dr. Adriana Kugler ........................................................... 39 

Prepared statement of Mr. Grover Norquist ......................................................... 49 

(1) 

IMMIGRATION AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO 

OUR ECONOMIC STRENGTH 

PART I 

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2013 

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, 

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 562 

of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Honorable Amy 

Klobuchar, Vice Chair, presiding. 

Representatives present: Brady, Duffy, Paulsen, Hanna, 

Sanchez, Cummings, and Delaney. 

Senators present: Klobuchar, Casey, Warner, Murphy, 

Heinrich, Coats, Lee, and Wicker. 

Staff present: Corey Astill, Ted Boll, Gail Cohen, Connie Foster, 

Niles Godes, Paige Hallen, Colleen Healy, J. D. Mateus, Patrick 

Miller, Robert O’Quinn, and Brian Phillips. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR, VICE 

CHAIR, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Good morning, everyone. I would like to 

thank you for being here today for this incredibly important hearing and conversation about immigration reform. 

I would especially like to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses. With the House and Senate schedules, Representative 

Brady and I have worked out a plan for this hearing that we think 

will work. We are actually bifurcating it, having this morning’s 

hearing and then having our two remaining witnesses tomorrow 

afternoon. And so I thank him for accommodating this hearing with 

his busy schedule. He is going to be chairing a subcommittee and 

will have to leave a little early, but we have a number of Members 

here and I want to thank you for working your schedules around 

it. 

Today’s hearing comes at a critical moment. Our economy is improving, but still fragile. The private sector is adding jobs but not 

quite at the pace we would like, and the housing market is getting 

stronger. But more needs to be done, and comprehensive immigration reform is one of the pillars which will help us to build this 

strong economy. 

That is why we have scheduled this hearing. We are going to 

focus today on immigration’s contribution to our economic strength 

and how we can make it work better. 
2 

We all know that our current immigration system is broken and 

that we need to work together in a bipartisan way to get comprehensive reform done. 

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I look forward 

to marking up in the coming weeks the proposal that is before us 

in the Senate. There is a large and diverse coalition supporting immigration reform in this country: business leaders, law enforcement, religious leaders, farmers, labor unions, people from all 

across the political spectrum, as you can see at our table today, as 

we stretch from the left to the right, in terms of the witnesses that 

we have with us today. 

Dr. Adriana Kugler is a Professor at Georgetown Public Policy 

Institute and is Co-Director of the International Summer Institute 

on Policy Evaluation. She served as Chief Economist of the U.S. 

Department of Labor in 2011 and 2012. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Mr. Grover Norquist is the President of Americans For Tax Reform, an organization which he founded in 1985 that works to limit 

the size and cost of government. Previously, Mr. Norquist served 

as economist and chief speech writer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and as Executive Director at the National Taxpayers Union. 

I don’t know how many times a Democratic Senator has asked 

you to testify, Mr. Norquist, but I did. And I think it is a tribute 

to the broad support that we see for immigration reform. 

This is not going to be easy or simple, but this reform is vital 

to our country. We need to establish a reasonable pathway to citizenship, continue the progress that we are making on the border, 

and make sure our companies are getting the workers that they 

need to compete in the world market. 

Immigrants are truly an entrepreneurial force in America. Just 

look at the Fortune 500 companies: 90 of them—90 of them—were 

founded by immigrants; 200 of them were founded by either immigrants or children of immigrants. And that, by the way, includes 

in Minnesota major Fortune 500 companies like 3M and Hormel. 

Thirty percent of U.S. Nobel Prize winners have been immigrants. This is a country that makes stuff, invents things, exports 

to the world, and immigrants have been a major force behind that 

entrepreneurial spirit and this idea that we can always do better 

and bring in new ideas and new people to help us get those ideas. 

I also want to focus this morning on some of the nuts and bolts 

of comprehensive immigration reform that will be very important 

to moving our economy forward, such as important provisions for 

ag workers—which we all know is in the bill, and also pathway to 

citizenship, but some specific provisions I think that people should 

take note of, which will be important to our economy. 

Earlier this year Senator Hatch and I introduced the I-squared 

bill, which is about encouraging engineers and inventors and entrepreneurs to work here in this country. I-squared is about innovation immigration. It reforms the H1B Visa system, as well as the 

Green Card system to meet the needs of a growing science, engineering, and medical community. 

I-squared would also reform the Student Green Card System to 

encourage students who get degrees here to stay here. Rather than 

going overseas to start the next Google in India, we would like 
3 

them to start it here. And that is what those provisions are about 

in the Green Cards. 

The bill would also change the visa funding structure, and that 

is something Senator Hatch and I are working on in the Judiciary 

Committee to make sure that some of the funds from the increased 

fees for the visas that many in the business community believe are 

possible and have in fact agreed to pay would go toward educating 

our own students with science, engineering, technology, and math. 

I am pleased that the legislation before the Senate, actually in 

the Senate Judiciary Committee, contains the bulk of the provisions that are in our I-squared bill. 

Second, I was just in Rochester, Minnesota, in the snow a few 

days ago and there we were talking about the need for more doctors in our country. We actually have some clinics in Minnesota— 

for example, Grand Meadow in rural Minnesota, who actually lost 

its health clinic because they could not find a doctor to staff it. 

Senator Conrad, years ago, introduced the Conrad-30 bill, which 

I have expanded on in this legislation, which has also been included in the comprehensive immigration reform to allow for expanded use of the concept of the J–1 Visa. What this does is, instead of sending doctors back after they do their residency, to the 

country that they came from, this actually allows them to do their 

additional residencies in under-served areas, including rural and 

innercity areas. And that would fulfill their requirements under 

the visa so they could then stay here and continue to work in this 

country. If they serve in those areas for five years, it actually allows them to serve even more. 

Again, there is a shortage of physicians in certain parts of the 

country that can be filled with doctors educated in our country and 

would like to stay. 

Another example of something you might not always think about 

that is in the comprehensive immigration reform bill that would 

greatly help our economy is tourism. Last year I was part of a 

group of Senators that introduced the JOLT Act. Senator Blunt 

and I have worked extensively on these issues on the Commerce 

Committee. 

What the JOLT Act does is to modernize and expand the Visa 

Waiver Program. That bill is also in this comprehensive reform. 

Just to give you a sense of the money we are talking about and 

the jobs we are talking about, since 9/11 we have lost 16 percent 

of the international tourism market. Every point that we lost was 

76,000 jobs. Can you imagine that? So every point that we are 

starting to gain back—and we have gained nearly 60 percent of the 

jobs lost during the downturn—every point that we gain back, 

76,000 jobs for this country. 

And so that is why we have worked hard on this JOLT Act, and 

I am glad that that is part of it, as well. Every foreign tourist that 

comes, even for a few weeks, spends an average of $5,000. 

One last point, we know that immigration reform not only benefits our economy in the short term but strengthens our economic 

foundation for the long term. Former CBO Director Douglas HoltzEakin estimates that immigration reform will save $2.7 trillion 

over 10 years by adding to our labor force, boosting productivity, 

and accelerating economic growth, something that we are going to 
4 

hear about from our witness Grover Norquist today who knows just 

a little bit about the debt and cares about it, as well. 

So those are the points that I think are important to take away 

from the focus on the economy: What we can add specifically in certain sectors, but also what we can add overall, as well as what this 

can mean for reducing our debt. 

Our country, as I said, must be a country that makes stuff, invents things, exports to the world; that is what this bill is all about 

that we are going to be considering in Judiciary over the next few 

weeks. And it has been really heartening to see the bipartisan support for the bill across the country, and we want to continue in that 

vein as we discuss this today. 

So thank you very much, and I will turn it over to Chairman 

Brady. 

[The prepared statement of Vice Chair Klobuchar appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 36.] 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. KEVIN BRADY, CHAIRMAN, A 

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS 

Chairman Brady. I want to thank Vice Chairman Klobuchar 

for choosing this important hearing topic that will be explored in 

a Joint Economic Committee hearing both today and tomorrow. 

Given the growth gap that America is experiencing, in which the 

current historically weak economic recovery translates into 100,000 

fewer new jobs per month, and workers realizing only a mere fraction of the increase in real disposable income during an average recovery, it is important that the Joint Economic Committee carefully 

and objectively examine the economic and fiscal effects of our current immigration system and proposed reforms. 

If we wish to remain the world’s largest economy through the 

21st Century, the economic objective of any immigration reform 

must be to maximize potential economic benefits for the Nation, 

while minimizing costs to hardworking American taxpayers. 

My belief is that we must close the back door of illegal immigration so that we can keep open the front door of legal immigration. 

My frustration through the years of this politically charged debate is that Congress and the White House have failed to agree on 

a most basic question: 

What kind of workforce does America need to remain the strongest economy in the world? And what steps do we need to take to 

ensure we have that 21st Century workforce? 

There is little doubt that the front door of legal immigration is— 

by all measurable standards—broken. Talented individuals with 

advanced education, unique skills, and wealth that could be invested here to create new high-paying jobs for American workers 

have been excluded, or have waited years, even decades, to immigrate legally. And the current visa program for low-skilled workers 

is essentially unworkable. 

Recognizing that other committees have jurisdiction over immigration reform issues such as border security, employer 

verification, and paths to legal status, the Joint Economic Committee will concentrate on its principal function, which is to provide 

Congress with analysis and advice on economic issues. 
5 

To that end, from our witnesses I am seeking answers to these 

questions: 

What kind of workforce does America need to remain the strongest economy in the world? And what steps do we need to take to 

make sure we have them? 

In addition to developing more trained American workers, who 

should we encourage to immigrate to the United States? And what 

should be our priorities? What criteria should we use to evaluate 

potential immigrants? 

Are immigrants entering the United States under our current 

immigration system a net economic benefit, or a net cost to the 

U.S. economy in the long term? 

What changes would you make to our current immigration system to maximize that net economic benefit to the United States’ 

economy, to the federal treasury, and to the treasuries of our state 

and local governments? 

How does the bill currently before the Senate Judiciary Committee affect economic growth in the short and long term, including 

its effects on wages, on real GDP per capita, on job prospects for 

Americans, and for our long-term global competitiveness? 

As America continues to struggle with historically high budget 

deficits, are the immigrants entering the United States under our 

current immigration system a net fiscal benefit, or a net fiscal cost 

to the federal taxpayers, as well as to the state and local taxpayers? 

How do the taxes that immigrants pay compare with the taxpayer-funded benefits they receive? And what is the impact of the 

immigration reform proposal currently before the Senate? 

Finally, what can we learn from the immigration systems of our 

global competitors such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand 

that admit large numbers of immigrants relative to the size of their 

native-born population? 

So just as we need pro-growth tax reform, a rebalancing of burdensome regulations, a sound dollar, and a Federal Government 

credibly addressing its long-term entitlement challenges, America 

needs a trained, mobile, and flexible workforce that meets the 

needs of a 21st Century economy. 

I welcome our witnesses. I look forward to their insight as we explore the economic effects of immigration reform. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Brady appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 37.] 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Chairman 

Brady. 

Dr. Kugler, do you want to begin? We have a number of Senators 

and Representatives here, so we are here to hear your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF DR. ADRIANA D. KUGLER, PROFESSOR, 

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. Kugler. Thank you very much for this invitation, and thank 

you, Co-Chair Klobuchar, Chair Brady, Members of the Committee, 

for organizing these important and timely hearings. 

As we know, over generations the strength and the dynamism of 

the U.S. economy has relied on many new incoming generators of 

immigrants, and today is no different. 
6 

Immigrants continue to contribute to the U.S. economy as entrepreneurs, as job creators, as workers, as innovators, as consumers, 

and as taxpayers. 

So, for example, we know that immigrants tend to be highly entrepreneurial even compared to their co-nationals and compatriots. 

We know that immigrants are over-represented among new business owners. They make up only 13 percent of the population, but 

17 percent of new business owners. They are twice as likely to generate new businesses. They are more likely to be self-employed 

than the native-born. 

And they are 60% more likely to also generate exports. They are 

more likely to contribute and have higher levels of start-up capitals. And they are more likely to create jobs also for U.S. workers. 

In fact, we know, for example, immigrant and small business 

owners generate 5 million jobs in total in the U.S. So this is very 

important. 

Immigrants, however, are not only job creators and business 

owners, but they are providers of labor, important providers of 

labor. For example, we know that 1 in 7 U.S. workers are immigrants today. And U.S. workers—and this goes back to what Chairman Brady pointed out—they fill important skill gaps. They fill important skill gaps both at the high end of the skill distribution but 

also at the low end of the skill distribution. 

In fact, the skills that immigrants have are very different from 

those that natives have. Immigrants are over-represented at the 

very, very high end of the skill distribution. We know that, although immigrants are 13 percent of the population and 16 percent 

of the labor force, 24 percent of U.S. scientists, and 47 percent of 

engineers, are immigrants. So this is very important. 

These immigrants are twice as likely to patent. These immigrants are much more likely to engage in mathematical and computer occupations. And at the very low end, immigrants are also 

filling an important gap. We know that the foreign-born are much 

more likely to have less than a high school degree—25.5 percent of 

them, compared to 5.3 percent of the native-born. And this means 

that they also fill important gaps. They do very different jobs from 

the jobs that are done by the native-born. 

In fact, they are much more likely to occupy jobs in production, 

in transportation, in construction, in maintenance occupations, and 

in service occupations. Moreover, for example, in agriculture alone 

most of the laborers are immigrants: 72 percent of agricultural 

workers are foreign-born, which makes you wonder how the agricultural sector would even function if these immigrants were not 

here to provide labor in those sort of jobs. 

Now some people worry that immigrants take jobs away from the 

U.S.-born, from native-born Americans, and they worry that they 

are going to be displacing these workers. They are going to have 

negative, adverse effects on their wages. 

In fact, we find generally in the literature that the impacts, any 

negative impacts that immigrants tend to have on the native-born 

are not there. The estimates tend to hover around zero. And in 

fact, the very recent studies that have been done on this topic, 

which are very thorough studies and which take account of these 

complementarities I just talked about, tend to find that if anything 
7 

immigrants tend to have positive impacts on the native-born, and 

in particular on high-skilled native-born Americans. 

So in fact a study by Ottaviano and Peri finds that the increase 

in immigration between 1990 and 2006 increased the earnings of 

the native-born by about 1 percent. In my own work, I find something very similar. I find that even among immigrants and the native-born who are likely to do the same jobs, a 10 percent increase 

in Latino immigration tends to increase the earnings of the nativeborn, high school native-born Hispanics by about 1 percent. 

All of this means that when there is immigrtion there are more 

job creators. They are people who are becoming employed. They are 

also more consumers in our economy, and immigrants in fact have 

a very high purchasing power. Among Hispanics, and Asians, especially the purchasing power reached $1 trillion and $500 billion, respectively, in 2010. This is money that ripples through the economy 

and it is money that benefits all of us. 

So any danger that we may actually be taking jobs away from 

U.S. workers seems to be unfounded in many instances. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Adriana D. Kugler appears in the 

Submissions for the Record on page 39.] 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

Mr. Norquist. 

STATEMENT OF GROVER NORQUIST, PRESIDENT, AMERICANS 

FOR TAX REFORM, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. Norquist. Thank you very much, Chairman, Vice Chairman, 

Members of the Committee: 

We do not have to sort of go to equations or predictions. We can 

look at our own history to see that as the United States has been 

the most immigrant-friendly, welcoming nation in the world, we 

have also become the richest, most powerful, most stable nation in 

the world. 

And we can look around at other countries and see how we compare with those. The countries that do better have higher percentages of their workforce and their population as immigrants. Being 

open to immigration has been part of the United States’ success, 

and some other countries have done well also. 

We can look at Japan, which is a country that, for one, is forgetting to have children, but in addition to that is not culturally capable evidently of immigration. And as a result, what was supposed— 

I mean, I went to business school in the 1980s and all I heard from 

everybody was that Japan is number one. They are going to leave 

us in the dust. And then all of a sudden, they left the playing field 

because, one, they forgot to have kids, and two, they are not capable of doing immigration. 

China is in a similar position. We are hearing all the same 

things about China as an economic challenge to the United States. 

They actually have immigration from the interior into the cities. 

But once you finish that, they do not do immigration outside of— 

from outside of China, and they are going to get old before they get 

rich. They are going to be old and not have enough—the number 

of people in China is eventually going to decline because they are 
8 

not doing immigration, but the number of the workforce declines 

faster in China. 

We can look at Europe with similar challenges there. They sometimes do immigration, just not very well compared to the United 

States. 

So it is one of our competitive edges in the world that we do immigration better than other people. Now we have been whining 

about it for 300 years, since the Germans started sneaking into 

Pennsylvania awhile ago. We have always felt that the new guys 

were a problem. The guys who were here in previous generations 

we are married to, and they are our neighbors, but the new guys 

are probably not up to snuff. 

We have just been through this again and again and again. We 

do not even have to go to international comparisons. We can take 

a look at what Arizona did recently when they decided to shoot 

themselves in the ankle with legislation which discouraged people 

who were in Arizona from staying; 200,000 people left. We had certain economic problems. 

They were worse in Arizona than in California, than in New 

Mexico. For other reasons, you would think Arizona would do better, but after they passed the law discouraging, people left and 

those jobs were not picked up by other people. Unemployment in 

construction. Unemployment in agriculture was not picked up by 

other people jumping in in some vast pool of people who were kept 

out of jobs by immigrants. And again, in both construction and agriculture and food products, you saw declines in employment that 

flowed from that. 

So comparing the United States to other countries, comparing 

the United States history, looking at state comparisons where Arizona has decided to be a bad example so we can all study it. And 

then you go to the questions where Doug Holtz-Eakin, the Vice 

Chair referenced his study recently which pointed to a bill similar 

to what the Senate has been looking at, how that would dramatically increase not just GDP but the government’s balance sheet 

with more revenue coming in, dwarfing external costs. 

One reason why bringing to legal status those people who came 

here without papers is that, imagine just in your own life, a sibling 

or a child of yours, you said go out and accomplish everything you 

can in life, but do so—but you can’t get a driver’s license. You are 

not going to be able to fly on a plane. And every time you switch 

jobs, you have to worry somebody will arrest you. That kind of depresses the kind of job and the productivity that you could have as 

a worker. 

When in 1986 those restrictions were removed from about 3 million people around the country through the amnesty program then, 

the wages of those people jumped 15 percent. They didn’t get 

smarter or harder working, they did not have these shackles put 

on them by the fear of living in the shadows. 

So each of these suggests tremendous steps forward if we do 

more immigration, total numbers, but also as discussed earlier we 

need more high-skilled workers. We need guest-worker programs, 

because there’s a lot of need for low-skilled workers. And when we 

think about dynamic economics, low-skilled workers have children 
9 

and grandchildren that may not continue to be sugar-cane cutters. 

They may be senators. And so—or they might become successful. 

[Laughter.] 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. I got it. That is so noted. 

Mr. Norquist. I should have stayed with lawyers. 

Chairman Brady. Note he did not say ‘‘Congressmen,’’ which I 

appreciate. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. Norquist. The challenge is that you have to look at this not 

just tomorrow where all the workers given legal status would do 

better, but over time the idea that the low-skilled worker, the Chinese who came over to build the railroads, did not stay in the railroad-building business. And the Japanese who came over to be 

sugar-cane cutters in Hawaii did not stay as sugar-cane cutters as 

they moved forward and future generations did better. 

So I think looking at this from a dynamic standpoint is very important, and also taking out those costs that are associated with 

education, welfare, and entitlement programs that exist independent of immigration, and not try and stick those onto the immigration debate gives us a good sense that the Senate’s legislation— 

which can be improved; there need to be more high-tech positions; 

there needs to be a more robust guest-worker program—these are 

steps in the right direction and it would be very helpful for the 

United States economy. And we can leave the rest of the world in 

the dust. 

[The prepared statement of Grover Norquist appears in the Submissions for the Record on page 49.] 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you, very much, to 

both of you. I am going to start with Dr. Kugler. 

You mentioned the ag worker issue, which Mr. Norquist also 

mentioned. One of the most moving parts about the testimony in 

front of the Senate Judiciary Committee where we have now heard 

from something like 25 witnesses was when the head of the Migrant Workers was sitting next to one of the heads of the farm 

groups. And as you know, the Farm Bureau, and Farmers Union, 

have endorsed this bill. 

Could you talk briefly about how this can be so helpful for agriculture in the economy? 

Dr. Kugler. Thank you very much, Vice Chair Klobuchar. 

So as I mentioned, 72 percent of laborers in agriculture are foreign-born. So only 28 percent of those working in agriculture are 

native-born. And they tend to do managerial occupations. So the 

basic labor work in the pre-harvest, harvest, and post-harvest 

stages tends to be done by immigrants. 

And as I said, this makes you wonder how the agricultural sector 

would even work if you did not have these foreign-born individuals 

working there. There are about 50 percent who are actually currently undocumented, and they are very much in limbo. They can 

be kicked out any time. Which means that at some point the $200 

billion in value-added that gets produced by the agricultural sector 

could even be halved. 

So it is very important to provide some stability to this labor 

force. It is very important to give some sense of certainty to the agricultural employers to know that these workers are going to be 
10 

there in years ahead. And I think the idea of providing agricultural 

visas, of allowing people to change from one employer to another, 

and to allow them to stay here makes a whole lot of sense. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you, very much. 

Mr. Norquist, the Heritage Foundation put out a report yester- day that says immigration reform could cost as much as $6.3 trillion over 50 years. I am going to put in the record an editorial from 

The Washington Post today which debunked a lot of those numbers. And, as you know, Cato and a number of other groups and 

economists—I’ve mentioned some of the facts in my opening statement—have also debunked those numbers and have criticized those 

numbers. 

Could you talk about that study? And do you think that it accounts for the economic benefits that immigrants could bring to 

this economy, and why you think that this study is incorrect? 

Mr. Norquist. Okay. To be fair to Heritage, for 30 years the 

Heritage Foundation was a Ronald Reagan-Jack Kemp institution 

that recognized the value of immigration to the country, and did 

very professionally done studies to that effect. 

Julian Simon, the great economist and thinker was a senior fellow at Heritage, and in 1984 put together a paper on The Nine 

Myths of Immigration, which covered most of the mistakes people 

make when they suggest that immigration hurts rather than helps 

the economy. Those nine are still true today—or still false today. 

The criticism of the nine is still true. 

And then that year they did a debate between Julian Simon, 

which they published, and some character from FAIR who made an 

argument against immigrants. And then in 2006, there was an excellent study Tim Kane put together, who is now at Hudson as an 

economist making the case that immigrants were a net benefit to 

the economy. 

It is only since 2007 that one guy over at Heritage has had a different opinion. The 2007 study at the time was basically used by 

a radio talk show host who took the number and not the analysis 

and had a conversation. 

Since then, other groups—Cato and others—have gone back and 

gone through that study and suggested it is not actually very accurate. And there was a hope that if Heritage did a re-do on that 

study that they would improve those. They didn’t. 

And much of the costs that they attribute are there anyway. 

They are people who are citizens today. Something like 40 percent 

of the cost is education, and 80 percent of those people are citizens 

now. So they stick that on as if it was a cost of the legislation. 

One thing to keep in mind when people throw out some numbers 

here is that somebody who is going to retire at 2030 is going to collect $650,000 on average on Social Security and Medicare, but only 

pay $494,000. So a little more than $150,000 for everybody that is 

going to get more in than they pay out. That is true for everyone 

in the country. That is true for people who are born here. That is 

true for people whose relatives came over on the MAYFLOWER. It 

has nothing to do with our immigration policy. 

And if you think that more people, because the entitlement system needs to be reformed—and I know you folks are working on 

that—but at present, if you don’t reform them the whole country 
11 

goes bankrupt, it’s not an argument to structure how many children you have, or how many immigrants you have, based on a 

flawed entitlement program that needs to be reformed. 

So if you take those challenges in, you take those numbers that 

Heritage puts out on entitlement, it is an argument against having 

children. I mean, children tend to be much younger than immigrants. Their English is much more limited. They do not work very 

often. And they are going to get a lot more out of the entitlement 

program than they put in. But that is a bad argument against children—— 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. I figured that out, yes. 

Mr. Norquist [continuing]. It’s a good argument for reforming 

entitlements. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very good. And from what I understand, when you look at the Holtz-Eakin numbers and other things, 

there is a strong argument—well, we will get the CBO score here— 

but that it actually brings it down in the long term to bring these 

people out of the shadows and have them work and pay taxes and 

everything else. 

Do you want to comment on that? 

Mr. Norquist. Yes. And this is I think where we should credit 

Heritage. They for a long time have said that we ought to be using 

dynamic scoring. When you increase the labor force, you ought to 

recognize that when you study the future labor force. 

When you know historically that people that come in and get 

legal status are able to work more productively, you can figure that 

in. These are not made-up numbers. These are historic numbers 

that you can look at. 

And so I understand CBO has announced they will be doing dynamic scoring on those issues where you can look historically and 

know something. You’re not guessing about what the impact would 

be. And I was disappointed that Heritage in this study decided that 

they would ignore dynamic analysis. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay. 

Mr. Norquist. I am not sure it makes sense. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. All right. Thank you. My last one, 

quickly, one of the most moving parts about your testimony with 

the Judiciary Committee is you quoted Ronald Reagan’s farewell 

address to the Nation about the shining city with walls that had 

doors that were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here. 

Do you think that this immigration reform moves us closer to 

being that shining city on the hill? 

Mr. Norquist. Absolutely. And, look, I want to commend the 

Senators and the folks on the House side in the approach you are 

taking on this, the Group of Eight that put together this step one 

on immigration reform. 

They didn’t show up at seven o’clock in the morning and say let’s 

have a vote at ten o’clock. They are not asking, like the Market 

Fairness people, they are not asking to skip the actual regular 

order of going through committee; it is online. Everybody who 

wants to whine about it or make a suggestion, or amend it, can 

read that. It will be before the committee. It will be before the 

whole Senate. The House is going to come up with their own analysis in this general direction. 
12 

So anyone who has a real concern can bring it up as an amendment. The people who just do not like immigrants can say, oh, it’s 

not perfect; no. I think that is silly. But I do think that the Senate 

and the House are taking exactly the right approach to this because it needs to be thought about and it needs to be done publicly, 

not in the middle of the night, not quickly. And we are months 

away from Senate action, and we are going to have lots of time to 

talk about this in the House. There is no reason for anybody to be 

nervous about how we go through. I think it is a tremendous opportunity for bipartisan cooperation in creating more economic growth. 

And as the Holtz-Eakin numbers say, this would do more to reduce 

the deficit than some of the other things people talk about. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you very much. I appreciate 

that. 

Mr. Hanna. 

Representative Hanna. Thank you. 

Mr. Norquist, in your testimony you state that immigrants exhibit different skill sets than native-born Americans, and therefore 

generally do not compete against each other in the labor market. 

Could you please elaborate on that point? Much immigration 

labor is highly skilled and thus presumably not differentiated—is 

not highly skilled and presumably not differentiated. Why would 

wage competition not occur in the labor market? And furthermore, 

knowing that Australia and New Zealand and other countries differentiate in the skill sets that they ask of people in terms of immigration, is that something you support generally, or not? 

Mr. Norquist. I am not sure that doing some Japanese MITI 

kind of economic planning thing—you know, you are a farm laborer 

today, therefore you will be a farm laborer forever; you are a chemical engineer, so you will be a chemical engineer forever. 

When you talk to the guys in Silicon Valley, the people who came 

in on H1B visas and invented the kind of companies that create 

tremendous amounts of jobs, bounced around. This was not their 

first effort. It’s not the first company they worked for. It is not the 

first zone that they worked in. 

So I can imagine some bureaucrat in Australia who thinks he is 

very clever going, oh, we need three plumbers; we will take three 

plumbers today. But in a free society, plumbers can decide to do 

something else in two years, two months, or two generations. And 

you get quality people—you know, guys who have not been to prison—and some of the engineering talent that—one of the reasons 

people talk about at the high end that certain engineers coming in 

do not compete with American engineers is we have shortages of 

particular kind of industries so that kind of by definition they do 

not compete. But they will compete by moving to Canada and compete from there. 

I mean, right? Microsoft has people they hire and they put them 

in Canada because they cannot get them across the border here. So 

they pay taxes in Canada and make the Canadian economy stronger, and they have to put up with all that snow. 

Or, they stay in India. Or they stay in Russia. Or they stay 

somewhere else and compete with us. In a worldwide, everybody 

competes with everybody and the idea that when they come over 
13 

here somehow they compete more than where they were worked before planes and Internet and more mobility. 

Representative Hanna. You talked about Arizona. If the net 

cost of public service to unauthorized immigrants in the state had 

been substantial and the laws had the intended effect of inducing 

unauthorized residents and workers to leave, is it clear that the 

state is now worse off, or better off? 

Mr. Norquist. Well the numbers I was looking at talked about 

wealth and income generated, 200,000 people who were working 

have left; the value of the housing in Arizona has fallen more rapidly than neighboring states. So we are comparing apples and apples. 

The only state that has had a worse catastrophe was Nevada, in 

terms of dropping home values. And those jobs were not picked up 

by somebody else. Meaning, the unemployment in those sectors 

where people without papers congregated. So that suggests that 

they were not displacing some guy, and when they left the person 

they had been displacing showed up and said can I have my job 

back? That is not what happened. 

Representative Hanna. So knowing that commonly accepted 

wisdom is typically wrong, state and local governments bear much 

of the cost of certain public services especially related to education, 

health care, and law enforcement. For both of you, can you speak 

to that? Because I constantly hear about the cost of immigration 

in terms of social programs. 

Doctor, do you want to start? 

Dr. Kugler. Yes, Mr. Hanna. So there are two things, as Mr. 

Norquist pointed out, that are faulty in the Heritage study. One of 

them is that it overstates the costs. In one sense we know that it 

overstates the cost to law enforcement, to education—because, as 

was mentioned, these are costs that would be incurred no matter 

what. 

In fact, we know that immigrants have a lower rate of incarceration. They are less likely to commit violent and property crimes 

as well. So, if anything, they impose less on law enforcement from 

that perspective. 

We also know that naturalized citizens receive lower Social Security income, which is not taken into account in this study by the 

Heritage Foundation. And in fact we know that poor foreign-born 

are less likely to claim benefits than the native-born. So there is 

evidence of that, once you control for everything else. 

Representative Hanna. Is there empirical evidence supporting 

that they basically pay more in than they receive? 

Dr. Kugler. Yes. So that is another very important point. One 

thing is that many of the undocumented have already been contributing, and they have been contributing over the past 10, 20 years. 

We know that, for example, the Social Security has received over 

$1 trillion in their Earnings Suspense files. These are the unmatched Social Security contributions. So this is money that has 

already been contributed by undocumented workers. 

The IRS estimated that between 1996 and 2003 undocumented 

immigrants contributed about $50 billion in income taxes, and 

there are good estimates and conservative estimates actually that 
14 

showed that state and local taxes are contributed by the undocumented at the rate of $11.2 billion per year. 

So this is money that has already been contributed. In addition, 

as Vice Chair Klobuchar pointed out, there are dynamic economic 

gains, and it is very important to point out that the Heritage study 

does not take account of that. 

For example, we know that as a result of legalization and eventual citizenship after 13 years, there would be a 25 percent gain 

in earnings and in income that would increase of course the tax 

revenues that would be obtained from these populations. So legalization in itself is something that would contribute to solve some 

of our fiscal issues. 

Immigration, as we mentioned before, would increase earnings of 

domestic workers, as well, and would increase the earnings of the 

more-skilled domestic workers which precisely means that they are 

people also who are going to be paying higher revenues into the 

system. 

Representative Hanna. Mr. Norquist, quickly? My time is up. 

Mr. Norquist. Yes. Undocumented workers have been paying 

taxes for some time. They pay sales taxes. How do you get away 

from that? They pay property taxes. And they show up with a Social Security number. They are paying the Social Security, but they 

are not going to get it out. They pay into income taxes as well. 

So there is some weird sense that somehow these people are not 

paying taxes. They pay all the interesting taxes that we run into 

on any given day without the deductions. And so that is one factor. 

But the other is, look, we have a challenge. We have a public 

school system that is not educating people as well as you would 

like. Most of the people—at a higher cost than is necessary. Most 

of the people that affects were born here, okay? If they are not 

learning American history, the guys who were born here are not 

learning American history. 

If they are not learning English properly, the guys who were 

born here are not getting very good English classes. We know from 

looking at states that have experimented with school choice that 

you can dramatically drop the cost of education and increase quality by giving parents a choice. 

If you are worried about the cost of educating people, let’s focus 

on that, not deciding that 3 percent of the population is the cause 

of some problem—— 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay—— 

Mr. Norquist [continuing]. I’m not sure that that is why the 

public school system is having trouble in Detroit, all the immigrants showing up in Detroit. There are other challenges that governments have in putting these forward. 

Medicare, Social Security, are not structured to be sustainable. 

That needs to be fixed. It is not the problem of an immigrant. It 

is not the problem of a baby. But we ought to fix them for everybody. And let’s do welfare reform, as Bill Clinton signed. There are 

185 welfare programs like the Aid to Families with Dependent 

Children. Let’s block grant them all. Do what Clinton did on welfare reform. Drop costs. Made people less dependent. 

But let’s do that for everybody, not targeting some group. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay—— 
15 

Representative Hanna. Thanks, Mr. Norquist. My time has expired. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Yes. Thank you. And we are going to 

try now to stay within the five minutes after Mr. Hanna, Congressman Hanna and I abused it, because we have something like 10 

Members here which shows a great interest in these witnesses. 

Congressman Delaney. 

Representative Delaney. Thank you both for your remarks, 

and I will address my question to both of you. 

And the question comes, Mr. Norquist, from some of the comments you made about how this is a competitiveness issue for our 

country. I am thinking about, or my question is a slightly different 

dimension to the competitiveness question. 

I have always been a big believer that the cost of doing nothing 

is not nothing. And we often times do not realize the cost of inaction until it is too late to fix the issue. And Senator Klobuchar I 

think spoke very eloquently about how important immigrants have 

been to our economy in creating the leading businesses. Half of the 

Fortune 400 have immigrant or children of immigrant founders. 

And the same is true today. 

I think in the last five years more than half of the companies 

that have gone public in the technology sector that received venture capital backing were founded by immigrants. 

And a lot of this is because our country has significant relative 

advantages. We have a rule of law. We have free markets. We have 

a large-scale and stable economy. We have some shortfalls, obviously, but we have significant relative advantages. 

One of our probably singular advantages is the fact that the majority of the world wants to come to our country. With 7 billion people in the world, I am not sure how many, but 5, 6 billion of them 

probably if they had their way would want to come to the United 

States and enjoy the benefits and the freedom that we all have a 

privilege of experiencing. 

And I worry in the context—and this does not get to the granular 

statistics that are at all accurate about the effect that immigrants 

have on our economy right now, but it gets to this notion that in 

a world that is changing because of globalization and technology, 

and as we see emerging economic centers around the world developing and competing with us, it feels to me like we enter this debate as if we have time to work through this. 

And I agree with the way you framed it, Mr. Norquist. We should 

spend time getting this right. But as if we will always have the 

ability to just flip a switch and fix the problem and everyone will 

want to come here. 

Is there a chance, in your judgment, that unless we fix this issue 

and really change how we think about this issue, that at some 

point in the future 5, 10, 15, 20 years, this singular advantage we 

have where so many people wake up and want to come to the 

United States may in fact not exist? 

And that while that is very difficult to measure, we can measure 

our debt-to-GDP very—we can measure it a hundred different 

ways. It is hard to measure this relative qualitative advantage that 

we have. And I worry that unless we get this right, that it will disappear. So we will start with Dr. Kugler and then Mr. Norquist. 
16 

Dr. Kugler. That is a really great question. 

I think there are not only short-term gains but long-term gains 

that can be made as a result of immigration. Of course in the short 

term you have this increased consumption, ripple effects through 

the economy, increased taxes, and all of that is going to help us in 

the short term. 

But in the long term, there are some important contributions. 

There is the issue of innovation. There is the issue of continued job 

creation, and continued entrepreneurship. 

In fact, we have seen less and less people come to the U.S., and 

less creation of venture-based firms by immigrants in recent years. 

And so it is very important to take that into account, because we 

also know that these new businesses which are predominantly 

being formed by foreign-born individuals tend to be more productive. They tend to be more innovative. They contribute more greatly to job growth. 

And so if this does not happen, we are running the risk that in 

the future these jobs are not going to be there and they may even 

go to other countries. For example, the EB5 program has been able 

to bring people to the U.S., and there is the Start-Up Visas that 

are being proposed which also take advantage of investors and venture-backed capital. 

But we also know that countries like Canada, like Australia, and 

other countries are already attracting many other people with 

those visas. 

Representative Delaney. Great. We’ll give Mr. Norquist a little 

time. 

Mr. Norquist. The short answer is ‘‘yes,’’ the other team gets 

time at bat. In the 1980s we dropped our marginal tax rates and 

we were growing faster than everybody else. And then the Europeans said, hey, we could do that, too. And their corporate income 

tax is now an average of 25 percent. We are at 35. And that is the 

European average. Stupider than France is not where we want to 

be. Other countries can move ahead of us both in how they deal 

with immigration—but good news. We have some time. But not an 

endless amount of time. And we could end up with the situation 

where people are perfectly happy to show up in Canada, and Australia, and Singapore. 

Representative Delaney. Great. Thank you. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you, very much. 

Senator Coats. 

Senator Coats. Thank you, Madam Chairman. You did a great 

recruiting job for this session here. I know there were some issues 

with the other one. We all had conflicts. But obviously this issue 

is something—— 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. I think we almost have everyone here. 

It’s a very good showing for some very good witnesses. 

Senator Coats. It is a tribute to your advising us of what our 

priorities ought to be. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you. 

Senator Coats. Both Dr. Kugler and Mr. Norquist made compelling arguments for immigration. We are all the product of that in 

time. I am the son of an immigrant. Unfortunately, Mr. Norquist, 
17 

I turned out to be both a lawyer and a senator, and apparently that 

doesn’t put me in very high status. But—— 

Mr. Norquist. Your children might work out. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator Coats. They might. Thanks to their mother, they might 

do that. But I don’t think there is any difference here, I would 

think, or even in the Congress, relative to the importance of immigration to this country, and the continued importance for ever more 

immigration to this country. 

The question is, though, how do we deal with illegal immigration 

to this country? And neither one of you distinguished between legal 

and illegal. 

Now maybe, Dr. Kugler, all the facts and statistics and numbers 

that you threw out relative to the Fortune 500 and the accomplishments of immigrants, but was there a distinction between legal and 

illegal immigrants in those numbers? 

Dr. Kugler. It is very hard to distinguish in those numbers between the two. But I can tell you that we know that some of these 

illegals are included in there. Some undocumented workers are included among the job creators, among the self-employed, certainly 

among the consumers—— 

Senator Coats. I understand. 

Dr. Kugler [continuing]. And among the workers. 

Senator Coats. I understand that. But you would agree that 

you cannot just simply come up with a number of the Fortune 500 

without distinguishing—— 

Dr. Kugler. No, I don’t think they would be included in the Fortune 500, but they’re included certainly among the workers—— 

Senator Coats. No, I’m not disputing—— 

Dr. Kugler [continuing]. They’re included among the self-employed. 

Senator Coats. Yes—— 

Dr. Kugler. They’re included among the consumers. I think 

what is important—— 

Senator Coats. Excuse me, excuse me. Can I say something 

here? I guess I have very limited time. I am not disputing the fact 

that those who have come here illegally, some have made great 

contributions to this country. 

The question is: How do we go forward? I was here in 1986. I 

supported Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy. At the time, we had 

3 million illegals. We were promised at the time that this would 

put an end to illegal immigration. It would strengthen the legal. 

And now we have 13-plus million. 

It did not do the job. How do we know 10 years from now, 5 

years from now, that we won’t be faced with say 23 million illegal 

immigrants—— 

Dr. Kugler. Yes, sir, let me answer the question—— 

Senator Coats. Let me finish the question. And shouldn’t we 

have a policy in place that finally addresses this issue? 

Dr. Kugler. Certainly. So let me answer the question. First of 

all, let me say that if there are any costs to immigration, they probably come from the illegal status that some of these immigrants 

have. 
18 

As far as I know, the numbers tell us that there are 11 million. 

I have not seen the 13 million that you mentioned. I have seen 11 

million, as far as the best estimates on this issue. 

There is certainly some cost. They may come on the fiscal side 

because we know that between 50 to 60 percent of these undocumented pay taxes. They actually do not benefit. They may have a 

harder time, for example, setting up new businesses. So you may 

not benefit as much on that end from this illegal immigration. 

But precisely we know that providing legal status is going to 

help us to further benefit from these 11 million people who are already here, and who would obtain legal status and would be able 

to gain this 25 percent gain that I mentioned before, which are 

numbers that come from studies that were done after the 1986 reform. 

Senator Coats. Thank you. Mr. Norquist, the question on the 

Heritage, my understanding is, and help me out here, before Heritage became what it is now, as you described what it was before, 

I think there was a study done indicating that the number was 2.6 

trillion I believe instead of the latest number out, 6.7 or 3, or whatever it is. 

What should the number be from Heritage? Was that previous 

number a good number? 

Mr. Norquist. The previous number was flawed for all the same 

reasons the present number is flawed. It used households instead 

of individuals. There were a whole series. The statisticians looked 

at the first one and said I hope they’ll fix this. They didn’t fix it. 

They doubled down. And then they added costs of legal immigrants, of people who are here legally, and stick them in the six. 

Educating the 5-year-old who was born in this country, who is a 

citizen, is not a cost of passing the Senate bill. That is going to be 

there. 

Senator Coats. So the same assumptions used now—— 

Mr. Norquist. And worse. 

Senator Coats [continuing]. To achieve this number were the 

same assumptions used—— 

Mr. Norquist. It got worse, actually, the quality of the work. 

On your question of legal versus illegal, we in the 1970s had a 

55-mile-an-hour speed limit. And there was all sorts of illegal driving going on. And we didn’t say, you know what we need first to 

do is to arrest everybody who is illegally driving over 65. We said 

55 is not reasonable. The highways are built for 65, and in Montana evidently 90. 

So let’s get up to a reasonable speed limit, and then enforce the 

law. And the challenge we had in 1986 was, they did some border 

enforcement. They did some amnesty. But they did not do anything 

with future flows. We did not reform the immigration policy to give 

us the quantity of both low-skilled and tech high-skilled workers so 

that, as soon as we hit the new—the economy started to grow, 

there was no legal way to get in. 

It is not like there was some other way for people to get employed. You know, we didn’t have numbers. So what this legislation 

that the Senate has put together begins to do is deal with that 

third part. What about the future? 
19 

How do we not end up with a whole bunch of illegal immigration 

in the future? The same way we ended up not having a whole 

bunch of illegal driving because you moved the speed limit and the 

immigration numbers to a reasonable number of what the American economy needs both to grow and to help everybody who is here 

already. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you, very much. 

Senator Coats. I’m way over my time. Thank you. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. We could do it on the record later. I 

just want to point out, in response as well, to Senator Coats’ question, that one of the things we will be focusing on in the Judiciary 

Committee with Senator Lee and others are these issues about 

what has happened over the last decade in terms of security, the 

fact that everyone agrees that the system is broken and it has been 

the reason that people like Speaker Boehner have said we need to 

speed up consideration of this legislation instead of delaying it. 

So I want to thank you for those question, and we are trying to 

focus very much on the economic piece right now, but the questions 

that you have raised about the past and how we fix this are very 

relevant to the outcome of the Judiciary hearings. 

Senator Heinrich. 

Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Norquist, I appreciated your comments about a farm laborer 

doesn’t necessarily remain one, and a chemical engineer doesn’t 

necessarily remain one. I started out as a mechanical engineer and 

somehow ended up here. And you can make up your own mind as 

to whether or not that was progress. But as an engineer I do know 

that STEM education is incredibly important to our economy, and 

that the next generation of STEM leaders will play a critical role 

in driving us forward in an increasingly global and competitive 

economy. 

I wondered if you could say a few words about the impact of immigration policies today that really force many of these U.S.-educated STEM graduates to return to their countries of origin, rather 

than putting those skill sets to work here in the United States. 

Mr. Norquist. Absolutely. Look, a whole collection of people who 

used to be anti-immigrant are now pro-immigrant and pro-immigration reform, including Lou Dobbs, right, when he was on CNN. 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he complained about these immigrants coming into the country. And then on—so you should just 

keep them out. And then the rest of the week he complained about 

the out-sourcing to the people we kept out, which gave him Saturday off. 

But, you know, if you tell a highly talented person you cannot 

come and be highly productive here in the United States, you have 

to do it someplace else, they don’t, you know, quit working. 

Senator Heinrich. That’s right. 

Mr. Norquist. They not only do not add to our economy and to 

all the success of us, but they go out and compete with us. And 

then people have to out—we need an engineer to do this; well, 

there’s one in India. Really? Yeah, the guy we wouldn’t let in, 

right? He’s doing it. So we out-source to them. 

Then people whine about out-sourcing. You can avoid outsourcing by having talented people come and stay here, and STEM 
20 

education is one way to target that. I mean, why in the world 

would you take all that lovely talent in somebody who wants to become an American and tell them to go live in France or something 

off like that. 

Senator Heinrich. Especially when we contributed a great deal 

to the educational system that made that possible for them. 

Dr. Kugler, I was home last week in New Mexico and spent a 

great deal of time down on the southern border in Dona Ana County, and met with—got a chance to spend a lot of time with Border 

Patrol, a lot of time on the Port of Entry, which is very economically important, and a lot of time with a number of the immigration reform advocates in that part of the State. And many of the 

people I got a chance to meet with are Dream Act students. 

They are students who came to the country not really by any 

choice that they made, but by a choice that their parents made. Incredibly motivated, hardworking, not only want to make a better 

life for themselves but really want to contribute to this country, the 

only country they really know as their home. A lot of them want 

to start businesses, be engineers or doctors or scientists. 

And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the particular 

aspects of how including an expedited path for these students as 

part of an overall accountable immigration reform effort will impact our economy, and not just the border region but the entire 

country. 

Dr. Kugler. Well, so these are the so-called Dreamers. I think 

the Fast Track, so-called Fast Track, instead of giving them a 13- 

year window, giving them the 5-year window makes a whole lot of 

sense. 

As you mentioned, these are people who are usually going to stay 

here no matter what. They are Americans for all practical purposes. And they will most likely become educated, continue to college, and contribute to the economy in all sorts of ways. 

There are some very good studies that have been done about the 

ripple effects, and the increased earnings that they would gain 

once, again, they gain legal status. And this is the big issue, right? 

Once you get legal status to people, they are much more willing to 

make investments not only into the education but also in terms of 

creating businesses, and to make long-term investments into their 

careers here in the U.S. 

So we know that there are actually big gains economically as taxpayers, as consumers, and this is money again that ripples through 

the economy. And there are some very good estimates on that end. 

Senator Heinrich. Well, Madam Chair, I am going to try and 

set a little bit of a—well, I am just going to yield back the rest of 

my time and not go over and see if it becomes a trend. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Well very good. And thank you for that 

focus, Senator, on the STEM and the need for more students. I always find it ironic that we have unlimited visas for sports players, 

which we love in Minnesota, as Representative Paulsen would tell 

you, from hockey players to basketball players, but in fact we have 

our limits on scientists and engineers coming into this country that 

are a third of what they were even just a decade ago. 

So, Representative Paulsen. 

Representative Paulsen. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 
21 

Just to follow up on those two points of Senator Heinrich’s as 

well, that I think it is really helpful to have this hearing that just 

looks at the issue of immigration through that economic lens. I 

think it adds just more credibility and thoughtfulness to the whole 

approach of this issue. And it is one of the reasons, obviously, that 

people are coming to the United States, for a better opportunity. 

And it is borne out in the statistics, obviously. 

I remember in Minnesota a couple of years ago I spoke to an individual who was involved in a software startup company. And he 

was seeking new software engineers that he needed to be successful and grow the operation. And he ran an ad in the Minneapolis 

Star Tribune and came back with two qualified applicants. 

He runs the same ad in the Delhi Newspaper in India and comes 

back with 800 qualified applicants. And clearly there was a disconnect there in terms of having the ability to fill where the work 

was needed to grow and prosper. And he was able to work something out eventually where he did operations not only overseas but 

also grew his operations in the United States in Minnesota. 

And I hear other stories from similar employers who go through 

those exact same situations that have a tough time filling open 

spots in terms of STEM, et cetera. And I have introduced legislation on the House side. It is not the comprehensive component, but 

it is one of the steps on the Staple Act that would exempt foreignborn individuals who have earned a Ph.D. in STEM from the limits 

on the number of employment-based green cards and H1B Visas 

annually. 

I know Senator Klobuchar has moved forward with similar initiatives, as well, and I think that is great because I think if we can 

get immigration reform right we can actually help our economy and 

close the growth gap, which I know has been a focus of a lot of our 

hearings in the JEC as well. 

I just want to follow up with one more specific question on STEM 

though if I could, Mr. Norquist first. 

It is pretty clear that we’re saying if you get educated here, foreign-born folks are educated here, we are sending them back home. 

They are going back home and they are becoming our competitors; 

they are competing against us. 

In your viewpoint, is there a tipping point? I mean, is there a 

critical mass where other countries at some point generate either 

local education systems, or entrepreneurial sort of development 

where there’s critical mass where we will no longer be the destination? Where we do have a tipping point and that critical mass is 

overseas if we don’t act soon? 

Mr. Norquist. Well you certainly see it in certain industries, 

banking and others. There are a whole bunch of cities where somebody could cheerfully go to and it would be almost like living in the 

United States, but without really cool cable. 

So I think, yes, it is a danger. And I think that we are better 

off making available—if they want to come and be Americans—that 

opportunity. I was unaware of the legislation that said if you got 

your STEM Ph.D. somewhere else come on in. I think that is a 

great idea. It certainly ups the numbers of folks that could come 

in, not just the ones who were able to get into schools in the States. 

I think that is an extremely good idea. 
22 

Representative Paulsen. And, Dr. Kugler, maybe you could expand, as well? Going forward, does the lack of STEM workers— 

what does it mean for future innovation for the economy in general, 

you know, quantifiably. And I know the numbers clearly bore out 

where the immigrants have contributed greatly towards innovation, 

and the dynamic components of our economy. But what happens if 

we do not move forward? 

Dr. Kugler. So we know from data just from last month that 

about 17 percent of employers are unable to fill their vacancies; 36 

percent are unable to find enough qualified applicants. And there 

are substantial skill gaps in high-tech manufacturing, information, 

and the health sectors. 

These are highly innovative sectors, which if they do not have 

the qualified labor would not be able to continue growing. Many of 

these people work in R&D and innovative activities, and without 

them we would hold back creativity certainly for the economy. 

It is very important that in the proposal they have included 

these exemptions to the H1B Visas from the caps for in particular 

doctorates in STEM, for those managerial occupations, and it is 

very important because the 65,000 cap is being reached continuously every year. It is being talked about in the proposal to increase STEM to 110,000. But these exemptions from these caps is 

very key because it allows people to come in no matter what, and 

not to have to rely on whether they will make it into that cap that 

year or not. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Thank you very much. Thank you, both 

of you. 

Senator Murphy, who knows a little bit about business. His State 

is first per capita for Fortune 500 companies. You may wonder why 

I know that, because Minnesota is a very close second. 

Senator Murphy. A very close second? 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Yes, thank you. 

Senator Murphy. I appreciate the advertisements, Vice Chair. 

Thank you to both of you for being here today. 

Mr. Norquist, I wanted to get back to the portion of your testimony talking about the demographic reality of the globe 18, 20, 25 

years from now. If anybody wants to have a little bit of fun, you 

should look at the predictions of average age by country in 2030. 

It’s actually not a ‘‘prediction’’; it is science because everybody is 

going to be alive in 2030 who is alive today. 

But China, which today is 4 years younger than us, will be 5 

years older. Japan will have an average age of 52. The average age 

in European countries will be 5 to 10 years older than the United 

States. And having just recently come back from an economic conference between U.S. leaders and European leaders, they look at us 

with envy. Because in addition to the energy revolution happening 

here and our relative state of economic growth to European nations, they just look at this demographic advantage that we have, 

dependent on immigration policy on continuing to head in the direction that allows us to remain relatively young as one of our chief 

strengths. 

And so I just wanted to allow you to expand a little bit on those 

comments. Because I think people fail to recognize the enormous 

advantage that we have that is dependent on us getting immigra-
23 

tion right. We are going to move in a matter of 18 years from 37 

to 39, and we are only going to become 2 years older on average 

as a nation despite all of the attention given to the enormous number of people graduating into the ranks of Medicare and Social Security roles. But immigration is a key part of this. 

Mr. Norquist. Sometimes people do say, you know, our national 

defense and our strength in the world is based on our economy, 

which is true, but that is also based an awful lot on the workforce—the size of the workforce, the quality of the workforce, and 

the age of the workforce. 

I mean, China’s challenge is not just eventually the number of, 

if you only have one child per couple, eventually total number of 

Chinese people declines in the world, but the decline in people of 

working age occurs sooner and is much more dramatic. 

I mean, Europe is not going to disappear in terms of numbers of 

people; it is just going to be old. It is going to be a bunch of people 

who are generally older and out of the workforce hanging around 

visiting cathedrals that were built 200 years ago, 500 years ago. 

And we can go visit and stuff, but it is going to be a little tedious. 

So this is a challenge, and it is an opportunity. It’s a strength, 

a core—I mean, if we were a company, you would say: What’s your 

competitive advantage versus other countries? Our ability to do immigration well, which is why getting an immigration reform bill 

that strengthens our immigration system so we can have more immigrants, better immigrants, and have a secure legal status for the 

people who come, and certainly in terms of border security for people you do not want to come. 

Getting this better is extremely helpful because it is one of the 

things we do. It is not like, oh, it is vaguely interesting and it is 

over here, and if we screw it up it doesn’t matter. It is what we 

do better than the rest of the world, and we need to continue to 

do that. And there are some obvious failures over the last 20 years. 

We have had opportunities on STEM, on high-tech immigration, on 

H1B Visas, on Guest Worker, on coming up with how to deal with 

Dreamers and so on, but we need to move now. 

So I am all in favor of taking time over the next few weeks, the 

next few months, but we could have done this 10 years ago. 

Senator Murphy. Right. Dr. Kugler, I wanted to talk about a 

criticism that is lodged all over the country, and certainly in Connecticut where people talk about immigrants, whether they are 

without documentation or with documentation, ‘‘stealing our jobs.’’ 

And the data that I have seen does not necessarily suggest that 

that is true. The data that I have seen suggests that the skills that 

normally come into this country complement rather than simply 

replicate the skills of American workers, and even those American 

workers are out of the workforce looking for jobs. 

Now it is not always the case, but I just wanted to give you a 

chance to respond to that common criticism. I think you referenced 

it a little bit in your testimony, but it is something—an important 

piece of pushback that a lot of us will need back home. 

Dr. Kugler. That is a very important issue. As I mentioned in 

my testimony, the most recent studies actually suggest that, if anything, there may be even gains in terms of earnings for the nativeborn as a result of immigration. 
24 

In fact, the Ottaviano and Peri study finds that an increase in 

immigration that happened between 1990 and 2004 increased earnings for highly skilled U.S. workers by about one percent. 

I also find very similar results. In fact, I looked at a group of people who may be more likely to be substitutable, who may be more 

likely to be taking the same jobs, and nonetheless I don’t find any 

evidence of that. 

So I look at Latino immigration and the impact that they had on 

native-born Hispanics, and in fact I find that a 10 percent increase 

in Latino immigration increases the earnings of Hispanics who are 

more highly educated by about one percent. And it has little displacement effects on even earlier immigrants who may be more 

likely to take the same jobs. 

So what happens is that they tend to specialize. They do different tasks. They take different jobs. And so we actually find very 

little evidence of displacement and, if anything, positive impacts on 

the earnings of the native-born. Not only in other sectors, but also 

because, as I said before, they are also consumers. 

So, for example, in retail there are huge increases in employment 

once immigrants come into local communities just because they demand those services, and so that increases employment in other 

sectors as well. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Senator Wicker, from Kansas. 

Senator Wicker. I’m actually from Mississippi, but I’ve visited 

Kansas once. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. I’m just kidding, because everyone 

knows ‘‘where’s Kansas.’’ Anyway, very good. Good seeing you here. 

Senator Wicker. Thank you so much. 

Mr. Norquist, very interesting prepared testimony. On page 2 of 

your testimony, you make the flat statement that people are an 

asset, not a liability. And I think I can extrapolate from that what 

you mean is illegal status people and legal status people, regardless, are assets. 

On page 3 of your testimony, you talk about the Arizona experience and compare that to New Mexico and California. And basically do I understand your testimony to be that in persuading, one 

way or the other, illegal immigrants to leave Arizona that has 

harmed the Arizona economy as compared to California and New 

Mexico where more illegals were allowed to stay there? Is that your 

testimony? 

Mr. Norquist. On the first part, the people are an asset not a 

liability is that people produce more than they consume, and that 

there is the old Malthusian world view that if you have another 

baby born in the country we are all poorer because you have to divide everything that we have by one more person. The idea of the 

whole zero population growth campaign which also is associated 

with and manages the anti-immigrant organizations. Their view is 

that people are a liability. More people make us poorer. And that 

is a world view. 

I think they are wrong. I think historically with 300 million people in the country we are slightly richer than we were when there 

were 3 million people in the country. And, that more people in a 

free society where people are allowed to innovate and operate in a 
25 

free society, the country is richer with more people rather than less 

people. 

Senator Wicker. Okay, well apply that then to the Arizona 

versus New Mexico and California experience. You’re saying they’re 

an asset to California and New Mexico, regardless of their legal 

status? 

Mr. Norquist. Well the argument in Arizona at the time was, 

oh, if these people were not here unemployment numbers would get 

better, and the economy would get better because they are a drain. 

When they left, things got worse. Unemployment was problematic compared to other similarly situated states. We are not comparing them to—— 

Senator Wicker. Things got worse as a direct result of their 

leaving? Is that your testimony? 

Mr. Norquist. Well, if you have another theory we can look at 

it, but clearly it did not get better. 

Senator Wicker. No, I am just trying to understand what you 

are saying. 

Mr. Norquist. The fellow who put that piece of legislation together got recalled. So somehow it was not viewed as a particularly 

good idea. And the two Senators from the State are two of the most 

outspoken advocates of comprehensive immigration, and both got 

re-elected with those positions. So the idea that Arizona, per se, is 

happy with that law—what they did is they made it a crime to 

stand on the side of the road and look for work. 

And I am not sure that that was a good idea. Other states have 

not followed it—— 

Senator Wicker. I supposed the Governor that signed the law 

got re-elected, too, so there’s always a difficulty extrapolating why 

people vote for whoever. 

Let me ask you this—— 

Mr. Norquist. Watch the next Governor. We’re going to be okay 

in Arizona. 

Senator Wicker. Let me ask you this, Mr. Norquist. 

If we did not have the 12 million illegals in the United States 

now, what would the economic effect of that be? 

Mr. Norquist. Well, you can look at where people came in. 

These are people who there was no legal opportunity to come in 

and be a farm worker or—— 

Senator Wicker. Would it be positive, or negative, if we didn’t 

have those 12 million illegal immigrants? 

Mr. Norquist. The GDP would be smaller. 

Senator Wicker. Okay. So from an economic perspective, should 

we—how should we be picking and choosing, Mr. Norquist? Who 

should we encourage to emigrate to the United States? Should we 

have a point system? And what can we learn from other countries 

who aggressively encourage immigration, such as Canada, and 

New Zealand, and Australia? 

Mr. Norquist. Well, you’ve got different examples through 

American history. I mean, one of the—the reason you have the illegal population is that we once had a guest worker program. We 

had lots of illegals, and we had a guest worker program. They were 

arresting 800,000 people a year on the border before Eisenhower 

put in a guest worker program. 
26 

Then they were arresting 45,000 people at the border. Then, the 

labor unions did not like it, so they got rid of the guest worker program and they were arresting 1 million people at the border, and 

people came in illegally. 

If you don’t have a guest worker program or a legal way to come 

in permanently or temporarily and work, people will come in 

around the system. And that was created by U.S. law, flawed U.S. 

immigration law, not having guest worker program, not having 

enough legal immigration to fit the needs. And a lot of high-tech 

people never came here, and they went and started companies in 

other countries. 

A lot of work just did not get done. So reforming that is very important. Look, there are all sorts of ways, the whole STEM idea of 

allowing people who have got certain skills and saying we need X 

number of guys from the high-tech industry, step one. But there is 

also a need for people who work in ranching, and dairy, and farming where there are not folks coming in from the domestic market. 

Whether you do that through permanent immigration, or 

through a guest worker program, those positions are needed for the 

economy. And if you did not have them, we would be worse off. 

Senator Wicker. Okay—— 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay—— 

Senator Wicker [continuing]. I think I will ask the witness to 

take that last question about what we learned from other countries 

for the record and get us an answer on the record. Would you do 

that? 

Mr. Norquist. Sure. Well, the Canadian—— 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very quickly, because Representative 

Sanchez is waiting. 

[The information referred to appears in the Submissions for the 

Record on page 26.] 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Thank you very much, Senator 

Wicker. 

Representative Sanchez. 

Representative Sanchez. Thank you, Madam Chair. And 

thank you both, Doctor and Mr. Norquist, for being here with us 

today. 

I would like to say, before I ask this question because this is an 

incredibly important question to follow up to the Senator’s question. I am one of the key sponsors in the House of Representatives 

for Startup 3.0. I have been a firm believer in STEM, in not only 

helping our young people born here in the United States to do 

STEM, but also to encourage those who come from abroad to stay 

here for awhile. And I feel conflicted about that because if they do 

return to their country, then they make economic pods there and 

then maybe we don’t have as much immigration going on either. 

But I have been a firm believer in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, my own background, but I also think it is 

important that we let others in besides just STEM people when we 

look at our immigration. 

I look at my Mom and Dad, both immigrants from Mexico, with 

not a whole lot of education. My father started in a factory and 

ended up owning businesses in that industry. 
27 

And my mother ended up, after sending seven kids to university, 

going back and getting her GED and her college and her masters 

and teaching for 17 years in the public schools young people and 

really making a name for herself in that industry. 

So my question to you is—oh, and by the way, they are the only 

two parents ever in the history of the United States to have two 

daughters in the United States Congress. So I think in one generation it is a tribute to hard work, innovation, desire to succeed, love 

of America, that I believe immigrants in particular bring to this 

country because they chose to be here. 

So my question to you is: Should we not also—because I know 

there’s a lot of desire to limit only to STEM, or people with Ph.D.s, 

or people with money to be immigrants to this country. I think 

there is a lot to be said for someone like my father who came here, 

who learned English here, who worked hard, who got cheated in 

every single way along the way as immigrants do when they first 

come to this country, but managed somehow to overcome that and 

send two daughters to, as he calls it, ‘‘the Board of Directors of 

America, Incorporated.’’ 

So you can tell where he’s coming from when he says those 

words. Can you talk a little bit about why it might be important 

to not just select the cream of the crop from some other countries, 

but why it is important to let others have a chance at being Americans, if you will? 

We’ll start with Doctor, and then go to Mr. Norquist. 

Dr. Kugler. Congresswoman Sanchez, what an inspiring story of 

your family. I want to say that, yes, there are important skilled 

jobs in high-tech manufacturing, but that includes also production 

workers, not only the innovators and the STEM workers. They are 

important skilled jobs being held. Some of those jobs being held, 

the ones growing the fastest and that are expected to grow the fastest in the next 10 years, do not necessarily even require a college 

education. 

There are some important skilled jobs in information, for computer science. Again, some of those jobs are not requiring necessarily very high levels of education. And of course we know that 

in agriculture there are very important needs. 

So I completely agree with you. It is not only skill as measured 

by level of education, but it is skill measured in terms of particular 

tasks that can be performed in the job. For example, I want to give 

the example of agriculture. 

In agriculture we know that about 65 percent of those working 

in agriculture do not have a high school degree. But nonetheless, 

more than 70 percent of them have been working in agriculture for 

more than 5 years. Presumably they have very specialized skills to 

work in the fields and to know what to do in terms of their harvest 

and post-harvest periods. 

So those are skills, even though they’re not measured as years 

of education. Likewise, in production you can think of electricians, 

carpenters. In construction we hear this all the time. That’s why 

those visas are also very important. It is very important to allow 

the non-skilled immigration as well to come in and satisfy those 

skill jobs. 
28 

Of course it would be great to train people here in the U.S., and 

I think that is what Vice Chair Klobuchar said is very important, 

that we use some of that money also and we get even in high-tech 

some of those high-tech firms to train our own U.S. workers to do 

those jobs eventually. But in the short term, those skilled jobs will 

not be met if we do not let some of those people from abroad come 

in to meet those needs. 

Representative Sanchez. Mr. Norquist. 

Mr. Norquist. Yes, American history suggests that you are 

right. I mean, we did not ask people to have Ph.D.s when they 

came over the last 300 years. And a lot of people came with raw 

talent and moved up. So we do immigration and upward mobility 

both. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you very much, for 

your personal story and what you are contributing today, Representative Sanchez. 

Senator Lee. 

Senator Lee. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to both of 

you for being here. 

I too am pro-immigrant. I am pro-immigration reform. We are a 

Nation of immigrants. I hope we always will be. And I agree that 

we need to make it possible to come into this country through the 

front door. 

I want to start with you, Mr. Norquist, and follow up on a statement you made a few minutes ago dealing with the fact that one 

of the reasons why we have got 11 million or so immigrants in an 

illegal status today has to do with the fact that we have had a legal 

immigration system that does not function properly. It does not operate in such a way that allows our immigration system to keep 

pace with economic realities, with the demand of our economy. 

So one question I have for you is: In your opinion, does the Gang 

of Eight Proposal deal with this adequately? So separate and apart 

from the fact that it would take those currently here illegally and 

put them on a path to citizenship eventually, if it doesn’t also deal 

with the inadequacy of the current visa system eventually that 

problem is going to creep up and we will have more illegal immigration. Would you agree with that? 

Mr. Norquist. Yes. You need to do something about future flows 

as well as past flows and status. 

Senator Lee. Does this deal with that adequately, in your opinion? 

Mr. Norquist. In my view, no. I think both the H1B numbers 

should be more robust. The total number of immigration should be 

more robust. The guest worker program should be more robust. 

Is this progress as opposed—Look, I am all in favor of compromising toward liberty and progress. This is a step in the right direction. Is it a step enough in the right direction? I think it could 

go further. But the world is a better place if that bill, unamended, 

passed than if it doesn’t pass. 

Can it be a better bill with better results in the future? Sure. Absolutely. That is what the amendment process is for. 

Senator Lee. Okay. But eventually you think additional adjustments would be necessary in terms of opening up visas, more visas 

both in high skilled and in nonhigh skilled areas? 
29 

Mr. Norquist. And it may be that that can only happen sufficiently after people have seen the success of 1.0 on immigration reform. But that is the direction that history suggests we need to go 

in. 

Senator Lee. Okay. Dr. Kugler, I would like to refer to a statement that was made in The New York Times on March 17th of this 

year. The Times reported, ‘‘And as a side benefit, waiting a decade 

would mean that the costs of the overhaul would not kick in until 

the second decade because illegal immigrants do not qualify for 

government benefits until after they earn green cards. That means 

the 10-year cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office 

would not include the expense of those benefits.’’ 

So the question I have for you is: How meaningful are the CBO 

cost estimates that we have? If they are based on projections that 

use a 10-year window, and the projected costs of the bill take those 

estimates outside the 10-year window because they hold off for 

more than 10 years the moment when there might be some direct 

entitlement and welfare implications of the bill? 

Do you understand the question? 

Dr. Kugler. Certainly. Yes. So I understand what you are saying. So we have the 10-year window, and in 13 years you have access to naturalization and citizenship. And you are right that then 

you won’t be entitled to many of those transfer programs, many of 

those benefit programs. But by the same token, it is true that we 

know that there is about a 10 percent gain just moving from legal 

status to citizenship, and that is not taking account of that. 

So it works on both ends, actually. You’re right that there is that 

issue about the cost side of things; but on the benefit side there are 

other things that immigrants will not be qualified for, including 

some of the access to more entrepreneurship, to loans, to other 

things that may also contribute in a dynamic sense. 

Senator Lee. And so do you think it is a wash, then, when you 

take those thing into account? Is that what you’re saying? 

Dr. Kugler. Yes. 

Senator Lee. Okay. All right, that leads into my next question, 

which is for Mr. Norquist, related to the wash point. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19th of this 

year, Douglas Holtz-Eakin noted that the 2007 immigration bill 

had a cost of $18 billion over a decade, stating that such an 

amount would be ‘‘swamped,’’ quote/unquote, by other changes. And 

he dismissed it more or less as a budgetary wash. 

Do you think Members of Congress, Members of the Senate, or 

of the House, whether they call themselves conservatives or not, do 

you think they should think of $18 billion as a budgetary wash? 

Mr. Norquist. Well, $18 billion is a significant number. So is 

$2.7 trillion, which is his estimate of increased revenue over the 

additional spending from a reform that looks like the one we’re 

looking at now. 

So all costs are costs. In this situation, as Holtz-Eakin points out, 

the growth of the economy and the benefits you get from something 

like the Senate plan is much greater. 

Senator Lee. And could you support it if you became convinced 

that the net cost was greater—that there was a net cost, and that 

net cost wasn’t offset somewhere else? 
30 

Mr. Norquist. Well first of all, the bill has no tax—the Senate 

bill that one could look at and read, there may be other people’s 

ideas—has no tax increases in it. There are fines for people who 

cross the border illegally. 

Senator Lee. No, I understand. I’m just talking about outlays, 

if it would result in more outlays. 

Mr. Norquist. I am focused on making sure taxes don’t go up, 

and that total government spending as a percentage of GDP goes 

down. And spending as a percent of GDP would fall, by any way 

you analyze the kind of reform that the Senate is doing. 

I mean, spending goes up every year. Does it go up faster than 

the economy is the question of how damaging it is. 

Senator Lee. Okay. Our Chair has been very patient with me, 

and my time has expired. Thank you very much. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay, I just have a few questions following up on some of the other Members. 

I think it was Mr. Delaney that was talking some, and Senator 

Murphy, about the effect on the economy in terms of the debt. And 

one of the things is the Social Security and the fact that in 1950 

there were 16 workers to every retiree. Today there are 3 workers 

to every retiree. And by 2030, there will be only 2 workers to every 

retiree. 

And I know we have talked about reform and other things that 

need to be done here, but how again does immigration stem that 

problem? When you look at the number of people, if we were to 

shut off our borders and not let any immigrants in, or to send back 

the 12 million that are already here now, or 11 million, or whatever the correct number is, how does that affect Social Security for 

our existing retirees? 

Do you want to start, Dr. Kugler? 

Dr. Kugler. So we know that by 2030 about 33 million new jobs 

will be created just due to the retirement of the Baby Boomers. 

Maybe 17 million more jobs will be created just because of growth 

in the economy. We need people to satisfy that demand, and we 

need people to do those jobs. 

But that has important implications as well for the Social Security system. As I mentioned before, currently it is estimated that 

there’s over $1 trillion in the earned suspense accounts. This 

means that many undocumented have already been putting money 

into the system. They don’t get anything back. 

But we also know that after September 11th, from the Social Security Administration, only about 15 percent of the undocumented 

are paying taxes. It used to be 50 percent before September 11. It 

became harder, and that fell to 30 percent. 

That means that about 70 percent of the 11 million undocumented would now start paying taxes as a result of gaining legal 

status. And that is very important, especially with the upcoming 

Baby Boomers retiring, and with many of those people not contributing to the system but getting the benefits on the other hand. 

In addition, as I mentioned before, we know that naturalized citizens actually tend to claim less benefits and tend to claim less. So 

they tend to put more into the system than they actually take out 

of the system. 
31 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Mr. Norquist, do you want to add 

anything? 

Mr. Norquist. Well the present entitlement systems, Medicare 

and Social Security, promise to pay more than people pay in. So I 

guess every person you add marginally makes things better in the 

short run, and worse in the long run, assuming you are never going 

to reform the systems. 

But if you are going to reform those systems to become sustainable, which really needs to happen in the next 10 years if the country is going to continue forward economically, then more people 

into those systems helps. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Tourism. I raised that in my opening 

statement, but we have seen this decline in the numbers at the 

same time we are seeing a growing middle class in other countries 

that actually have money to come to visit us and spend money 

here, and buy stuff in America. 

What do you think of the provisions in the Senate proposal on 

tourism, Dr. Kugler? 

Dr. Kugler. So as we know, the recovery in the rest of the world, 

aside from Europe, has been a lot quicker, including in Latin 

America, Asia, and the rest of the world. So it makes sense for us 

to bring as much as possible those resources back into the U.S. 

Just like we export, it makes sense to bring money into the country 

as well in terms of tourism, and issuing tourist visas as long as 

people don’t overstay on those visas makes quite a bit of sense. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very good. 

Mr. Norquist. Those provisions are sheer genius. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Oh, thank you so much. 

[Laughter.] 

I am going to quote you on that, since I worked on some of them. 

Thank you. 

In the testimony before the Judiciary Committee last month— 

this will be our last thing on the debt issue with regard to the Heritage study—but you mentioned a number of studies showing the 

positive impact of immigration reform on increasing economic 

growth, reducing our debt, adding trillions on the high end in 

terms of bringing money into the economy. But I was struck by the 

point you made that replacing immigration reform with an enforcement-only policy would lead to a 2.6 trillion decrease in growth 

over the same period of time. 

Could you talk about that, and again use that to explain what 

is missing from the Heritage—the current Heritage Foundation Report? 

Mr. Norquist. Yes. The Heritage Report, the most recent one, 

not the earlier pro-immigration, pro-reform, pro-immigrant studies 

that Heritage did for 30 years before they changed their mind, the 

current reform doesn’t—you know, how’s your wife? Compared to 

what? 

How do you like immigration reform? Compared to what? The 

status quo? To deporting everybody who is here? One of the questions was: What if everybody left? 

Well, one of the studies I quoted in the Judiciary testimony was: 

What if you went and spent the money to grab everybody and put 

them across the border, the cost there? And that was a rather sig-
32 

nificant—it was not only a huge cost to finding people, grabbing 

them, and throwing them across the border in terms of dollar 

amounts, and it is hundreds of billions of dollars to do that if you 

wanted to; but then the lost productivity was estimated to reduce 

GDP significantly in the trillions of dollars. 

So if you are not going to reform immigration policy and allow 

earned legal status for people who are here undocumented, what 

are you going to do? Continue the status quo? In which case, any 

costs you see now continue into the future. Or, if you are actually 

going to grab people and throw them across the border and they 

are not here and they are not being—theoretically not being replaced, there is a dramatic drop to GDP. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Very good. Do you have any questions 

in addition, Mr. Hanna? 

Representative Hanna. I do—— 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay. 

Mr. Hanna [continuing]. Madam Chair. 

Doctor, are you familiar with Harvard Professor George Borjas’ 

work? He indicates that indeed immigrant workers do compete 

with and do have the net effect of lowering wages. 

Just a response? I think it is worth talking about. 

Dr. Kugler. I am certainly aware of Professor Borjas’ work. We 

are both members of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

I presented my work in front of him in fact, and we have interacted 

closely with each other. 

His work is very thorough, but one of the big issues with his 

work is that it does not take account of this potential 

complementarity. It basically assumes that for every one immigrant that is put in, one job among natives will be taken out. That 

they perfectly substitute each other. 

And so once you are making that assumption, you know, the results are going to give what they give. And what he finds is that 

there is, for every 10 percent increase in immigration there is a 3 

percent decrease in native wages, and this is bigger for the less 

skilled because they are more likely to be substitutable at that end 

precisely. 

So we are aware of those. As I said, some of the recent studies 

that have come out precisely take account of the fact that immigrants and native-born Americans are not necessarily substitutable. 

Representative Hanna. So you do not agree with him? 

Dr. Kugler. I think there are some problems with his study, yes. 

Representative Hanna. Thank you. I have no further questions. 

Vice Chair Klobuchar. Okay. Very good. Well, thank you very 

much. And this has been a great hearing, one of our most well attended hearings. I don’t know if you will beat out when Chairman 

Bernanke comes, but it was close in terms of the attendance here. 

And I think it is a testament to both of you, as well as to the importance of this subject, the cutting edge work that is going on 

right now in the Judiciary Committee, and work that is going on 

in the House to advance this. 

We are actually quite excited about what is happening with this. 

We are seeing movement for the first time. And as Mr. Norquist 
33 

has pointed out, opponents from a few years ago when I was involved back in 2007 and saw how very hard work and a valiant effort on the part of President Bush did not quite make it because 

people are not ready with these kind of economic arguments that 

I think are going to be so important to this debate, as well as the 

security arguments and things that we have been talking about 

over the last few weeks. 

I truly believe that this economic opportunity is ours for the taking. When you look at how we built America, it has always been 

a country of immigrants, whether it is my Slovenian grandparents, 

great grandparents, coming over to work in the mines of Ely, Minnesota, or my Swiss grandparents coming over to start a cheese 

factory in Wisconsin—pretty cliche but true—we are a country of 

immigrants, and we have to remember that every single day. 

And we do not know who is going to invent the next Pacemaker, 

or Post-It Note, both of which came from my State, but when they 

do it, we want them to do it in the United States of America. 

So I want to thank Chairman Brady for working with me on this 

hearing, as well as all of the Members that have been here. We will 

continue this hearing at two o’clock tomorrow for our remaining 

two witnesses. 

Thank you very much, and the record will remain open. 

Thank you, everyone. The hearing is adjourned. 

Mr. Norquist. Thank you. 

Dr. Kugler. Thank you. 

(Whereupon, at 11:08 a.m., Tuesday, May 7, 2013, the hearing 

was recessed, to reconvene at 2:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 8, 2013.) 

(35) 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR, VICE CHAIR, JOINT ECONOMIC

COMMITTEE

Good morning. I’d like to thank everyone for being here today for this important 

and timely conversation about immigration. I’d especially like to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses, who I will introduce shortly. 

Today’s hearing comes at a critical moment. Our economy is improving, the private sector is adding jobs, and the housing market is getting stronger. But more 

needs to be done, and comprehensive immigration reform is key to moving our economy forward. That is why I have scheduled this two-part hearing to discuss immigration’s contribution to our economic strength. 

We all agree that our current immigration system is broken, and that we’ll need 

to work together in a bipartisan manner to get comprehensive reform done. As a 

member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will be there later this week as we 

start marking up immigration reform legislation. 

There is a large and diverse coalition supporting immigration reform, including 

business leaders, law enforcement, religious leaders, farmers, labor unions, and people from across the political spectrum. We can in fact see the stretch of the ideological left to the right support for this bill right here at this table. I’d like to introduce 

our witnesses now. 

Dr. Adriana Kugler is a Professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and 

is Co-Director of the International Summer Institute on Policy Evaluation. She 

served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor in 2011 and 2012. She 

is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Mr. Grover Norquist is the President of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization which he founded in 1985 that works to limit the size and cost of government. 

Previously, Mr. Norquist served as Economist and Chief Speechwriter at the U.S. 

Chamber of Commerce and as Executive Director of the National Taxpayers’ Union. 

I don’t know how many times a Democratic Senator has asked Grover Norquist 

to testify, but I did. We will chalk it up to the strong bipartisan support for this 

bill. 

It’s not going to be easy or simple, but this reform is vital to our country. We need 

to establish a reasonable pathway to citizenship, continue the progress we’ve made 

on the border, and make sure our companies are getting the workers they need to 

compete in the world market. 

Immigrants are an entrepreneurial force in America. Look at the Fortune 500 

companies. Ninety of those companies were founded by immigrants, and more than 

200 were founded by immigrants or their children—including Hormel and 3M in my 

state. Thirty percent of all U.S. Nobel Prize winners have been immigrants. 

I also want to focus this morning on some aspects of comprehensive immigration 

reform that are very important to moving our economy forward, such as important 

provisions for ag workers and a pathway to citizenship. 

I-SQUARED

Earlier this year I co-sponsored Senator Hatch’s legislation, the I-Squared Bill, 

which is about encouraging engineers and inventors and entrepreneurs to work here 

in this country. I-Squared reforms the H–1B visa system to meet the needs of a 

growing science, engineering and medical community. 

I-Squared would also reform the student green card system to encourage students 

who get degrees here to stay here, rather than going overseas to compete against 

American businesses. The bill would also improve the green card system and change 

the visa funding structure to improve science, engineering, technology and math 

education. 

I am pleased that the legislation includes provisions very similar to I-Squared. 

CONRAD 30

Second, comprehensive immigration reform can contribute to economic strength 

by allowing doctors to stay in the U.S. to practice medicine, rather than returning 

to their home country for two years after their residency has ended. We have medically under-served areas of our country—from rural America to inner cities. As just 

one example, Grand Meadow, Minnesota, lost its local health clinic because they 

could not find a doctor to staff it. 

I sponsored legislation expanding on the former Conrad State 30 Physician Access 

Act that would allow doctors to stay in the U.S. without having to return home if 

they practice in an underserved area for three years. Access to quality health care 

helps businesses attract the employees they need to grow and compete. The Gang 

of Eight legislation includes the Conrad State 30 provisions. 
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TOURISM

Immigration reform is critical to another important part of our economy in Minnesota and across the country: tourism. Last year, a bipartisan group of Senators 

including myself introduced a bill, the JOLT Act, to modernize and expand the Visa 

Waiver Program and reduce visa wait times. 

Tourism suffered a 16 percent decline after 9/11. Every one percent increase in 

travel spending directly generates 76,700 American jobs. We have seen significant 

improvements in the tourism industry, which has recovered nearly 60 percent of the 

jobs lost since 9/11. The tourism industry now supports 7.7 million jobs in the 

United States. 

These are jobs that, like the jobs at our airports, depend on leisure and business 

travelers from around the world. The immigration reform bill in the Senate includes 

the JOLT Act, which is a positive step for tourism. 

One last point: We know that immigration reform not only benefits our economy 

in the short term, but it will strengthen our economic foundation for the long term 

by helping address our national debt. 

Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimates that immigration reform 

will save $2.7 trillion over 10 years by adding to our labor force, boosting productivity and accelerating economic growth, something we will hear more about from 

our witness Grover Norquist today, who knows a little bit about the debt. 

America must be a country that makes stuff again, that invents things, that exports to the world, and to do that we need the world’s talent. 

I look forward to our discussion as we dig into the economic impact of immigration. And again, I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. KEVIN BRADY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT ECONOMIC

COMMITTEE

I want to thank Vice Chair Klobuchar for choosing this important hearing topic 

that will be explored in a Joint Economic Committee hearing today and tomorrow. 

Given the growth gap which America is experiencing—in which the current historically weak economic recovery translates into 100,000 fewer new jobs per month 

and workers realizing only a mere fraction of the increase in real disposable income 

during an average recovery—it is important that the Joint Economic Committee 

carefully and objectively examine the economic and fiscal effects of our current immigration system and proposed reforms. 

If we wish to remain the world’s largest economy through the 21st century, the 

economic objective of any immigration reform must be to maximize potential economic benefits for the nation while minimizing costs to hardworking American taxpayers. 

My belief is that we must close the back door of illegal immigration so that we 

can keep open the front door of legal immigration. My frustration through the years 

of this politically charged debate is that Congress and the White House have failed 

to agree on a most basic question: What kind of workforce does America need to 

remain the strongest economy in the world, and what steps do we need to take to 

ensure we have that 21st century workforce? 

There’s little doubt the front door of legal immigration is—by all measurable 

standards – broken. Talented individuals with advanced education, unique skills, 

and wealth that could be invested here to create new, high-paying jobs for American 

workers have been excluded or have waited years—even decades—to immigrate legally. And the current visa program for low-skilled workers is essentially unworkable. 

Recognizing that other committees have jurisdiction over immigration reform 

issues such as border security, employer verification, and paths to legal status, the 

Joint Economic Committee will concentrate on its principal function, which is to provide Congress with analysis and advice on economic issues. 

To that end, from our witnesses, I am seeking answers to these questions: 

• What kind of workforce does America need to remain the strongest economy in 

the world, and what steps do we need to take to ensure we have a 21st century 

workforce? 

• In addition to developing more trained American workers, who should we encourage to immigrate to the United States and what should be our priorities? 

What criteria should we use to evaluate potential immigrants? 

• Are immigrants entering the United States under our current immigrant system a net economic benefit or a net cost to the U.S. economy in the long term? 

What are the benefits and the costs? 
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• What changes would you make to our current immigration system to maximize 

the net economic benefits to the U.S. economy, the federal treasury, and the 

treasuries of state and local governments? How does the bill currently before 

the Senate Judiciary Committee affect economic growth in the short and long 

term, including its effects on wages, real GDP per capita, job prospects for 

Americans, and our long-term global competitiveness? 

• As America continues to struggle with historically high budget deficits, are the 

immigrants entering the United States under our current immigration system 

a net fiscal benefit or a net fiscal cost to the federal taxpayers and to state and 

local taxpayers in the long term? How do the taxes that immigrants pay compare with the taxpayer-funded benefits that they receive? And what is the impact of the immigration reform proposal currently before the Senate? 

• Finally, what can we learn from the immigration systems in our global competitors such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand that admit large numbers of 

immigrants relative to the size of their native-born population? 

Just as we need pro-growth tax reform, a rebalancing of burdensome regulations, 

a sound dollar and a federal government credibly addressing its long term entitlement challenges, America needs a trained, mobile and flexible workforce that meets 

the needs of a 21st century economy. 

I welcome our witnesses and look forward to their insight as we explore the economic effects of immigration reform. 
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