{"id":23744,"date":"2020-10-15T13:43:04","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T17:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=23744"},"modified":"2020-10-15T13:43:06","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T17:43:06","slug":"raise-act-post-covid-pass-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/10\/15\/raise-act-post-covid-pass-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing Like Some Good Pre-COVID Prognostication to Argue for Mass Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are many lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 crisis. Among them is that economic forecasts that look beyond, say next week, are nothing more than educated guesses. But that has not stopped FWD.us, a Silicon Valley-funded mass immigration advocacy group<\/a> from citing a 2017 study as the basis for analyzing of what the group claims would be the harmful effects<\/a> of enacting the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The RAISE <\/a>A<\/a>ct<\/a>, sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), David Perdue (R-Ga.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), would transition U.S. immigration policy from one that is largely based on family chain migration, to a system that prioritizes education and job skills. It would also reduce our historically high levels of immigration by about 50 percent. Even without enactment of the RAISE Act, FWD.us bemoans that due to restrictions put in place in response to the COVID crisis, immigration has (at least temporarily) been cut by that amount. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reductions have \u201cdone incredible damage to the economy,\u201d FWD.us asserts. \u201cExperts estimate that the Trump Administration\u2019s proposed cuts to current immigration levels would shrink GDP by 2% and cost 4.6 million jobs<\/a> over 20 years.\u201d Actually, it is COVID that has done the incredible damage to the economy, but FWD.us hopes no one will notice that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experts to whom they are referring do indeed have some\ncredentials. They are researchers at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s\nprestigious Wharton School of Business. But what FWD.us also hopes you won\u2019t\nnotice is that the study was published in 2017. The Wharton researchers, like\neveryone else on the planet, didn\u2019t see COVID coming \u2013 a development that\nrenders this and other economic forecasts, especially those projecting as far\ninto the future as 2040, worthless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long range economic projections are inherently suspect. Even\nthough the Wharton researchers cannot be faulted for not having anticipated\nCOVID, we can be 100 percent certain that there will be numerous unforeseen\ndevelopments over a 23 year period that will change the course of events \u2013 some\nslightly, some dramatically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another obvious sleight of hand on the part of FWD.us is\nthat the Wharton model does not actually project that GDP would shrink if the\nRAISE Act were implemented. Rather, it claims that GDP would be 2 percent less than\nit might otherwise be without adopting the RAISE Act \u2013 a projection that is\nbased on the shaky proposition that half of new immigrants admitted under our\ncurrent family chain migration system, over that period, would have college\ndegrees or better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s the very significant distinction between\nGDP and per capita GDP \u2013 the latter of which is arguably far more important.\nOnce you get beyond Wharton\u2019s bullet point summary of key findings and into the\nmeat of the report, you find that under the report\u2019s more realistic 10-year\nforecast the RAISE would increase per\ncapita GDP<\/em>. \u201c[W]e project that the RAISE Act will increase per capita GDP\nby 0.02 percent by 2027,\u201d states the Wharton analysis, (again, based on their\nquestionable assumption that continuation of current policies would have\nresulted half of all legal immigrants holding post-secondary degrees). Longer\nterm (by 2040), Wharton does claim that the RAISE Act would result in lower per\ncapita GDP, but the farther out you look the murkier things get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, of course, if you are an advocacy group that is funded by business interests with an insatiable appetite for foreign labor, why let a little thing like the economic upheaval of COVID stand in the way of staking your case on already dubious pre-pandemic economic forecasts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 crisis. Among them is that economic forecasts that look beyond, say next week, are nothing more than educated guesses. But that has not stopped FWD.us, a Silicon Valley-funded mass immigration advocacy group from citing a 2017 study as the basis for analyzing of what the<\/p>\n

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