Immigration Tied to Economic Success

"America is a nation of immigrants, and its economy is propelled and activated by its openness to immigration and the new ideas and entrepreneurial energy that immigrants provide," writes Joe Cortright, in a focused response to recent proclamations by the Trump Administration limiting immigration and travel to the United States.

Cortright provides numerous examples of the obvious and out-sized benefits famous immigrants have offered the United States, before turning his attention to the scale of the contribution to the U.S. economy by "foreign-born talent."

"Several of the nation’s most productive metropolitan areas–San Jose, San Francisco, New York and Seattle–all have above average levels of foreign-born persons among their best educated," according to Cortright.

And in case you're looking for a succinctly phrased, but still multi-faceted argument against the Trump's Administration policies, here's Cortright's concluding paragraph:

There are a lot of reasons to oppose President Trump’s ban on immigration from these Islamic countries. The most important reasons are moral, ethical and legal. But on top of them, there’s a strongly pragmatic, economic rationale as well: the health and dynamism of the US economy, and of the metropolitan areas that power the knowledge-driven sectors of that economy, depend critically on the openness to smart people from around the world.