More Workers, More Prosperity.

Larry Kudlow of National Review Online makes an excellent point about the positive relationship between an enlarged workforce and more economic prosperity. (Here.) He makes the following recommendations for solving the illegal immigration problem.

As long as the American boom beckons, Mexicans in search of prosperity will continue to stream to this country. They have a strong incentive to do so. The only way to reduce illegal immigration, therefore, is to raise the unskilled H-2B visa level and bring it in line with job openings in the United States. This is the only feasible economic solution to the chronic problem of illegal immigration. The idea worked forty years ago with the successful Bracero program for farm workers. It can work again.

Today’s low visa limit of only 140,000 has caused illegal flows to skyrocket. This must be changed. Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute estimates that U.S. labor-market conditions can absorb about 400,000 Mexican immigrants per year. This would balance labor supply-and-demand conditions and illegal immigration would plummet.

You can build a fence, but desperate Mexicans in search of economic opportunity will climb over it or tunnel under it. This is the reality. And by the way, our H-1B visa program for skilled workers, now at only 65,000, should be unlimited. We need all the scientists and engineers we can get.

Not only do his recommendations make a lot of sense, they are more in keeping with the best of America's nature. Too bad Kudlow doesn't have Lou Dobbs's job. Our country would be better off if he did.

-tdr

Technorati: illegal immigration, Mexico.