Immigration
Step Three: Clear the Deck & Find a Rational Balance
SEE THE BALANCE 1787 PROPOSES HERE
Immigrants established and literally build the United States, and they continue to enhance America, both culturally and economically, adding tremendous value to our country. They strengthen our academic communities, lead in scientific and technological innovation, and elevate our economic development by starting new businesses, creating new jobs, and patenting intellectual property.
To ensure our long-term economic health and to remain globally competitive, we should offer a Permanent Resident Card (Green Card) to every international student who receives a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degree from an American university. We’re just leaving money on the table if we don’t. Why in the world would we educate smart, talented people over here, then send them back home to use their skills and knowledge to compete with us? That makes zero sense.
In the 1787 plan, whatever visas we extend to international STEM graduates will go against the new yearly national limit we set for all immigration categories. The number of these visas will obviously change every year but, as a reference, in the 2023-24 school year there were 1,126,690 students from abroad studying in our higher education institutions (502,291 of these were graduate students). Fifty-six percent studied in the STEM fields, and math and computer science continued to increasingly be the leading field of study for these students.
There are many reasons why this approach is critical for the health of America’s economic future, but here are a few:
Since 2000, immigrants have been awarded 38 percent (45 of 117) of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine, and physics, and 31 percent (24 of 78) of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in economics.
The National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) warns that “without international students, the number of students pursuing graduate degrees (master’s and PhD) in fields such as computer science and electrical engineering would be small given the size of the U.S. economy.”
They also warn that “without continued net inflow of immigrants, the U.S. working-age population will shrink over the next two decades and by 2040, the United States will have over 6 million fewer working-age people than in 2022. A shrinking working-age population can easily lead to economic stagnation or even falling living standards for a nation. A shrinking population means fewer people to generate new ideas that lead to technological progress and long-term growth. A shrinking population also means fewer workers to produce goods and services. When combined with an aging population that continues to demand labor-intensive goods and services, the result is likely to be price pressures and shortages.”
The American Immigration Council – which recently merged with New American Economy, a bipartisan research fund founded by Michael Bloomberg – reveals this in its New American Fortune 500 in 2024 report:
“Looking at the New American companies that made the 2024 Fortune 500 list, we find that 46 percent, or 230 companies, were founded by immigrants or their children. Of those companies, 108 had immigrant founders and 123 had founders being children of immigrants. This year, 10 new companies made the New American Fortune 500 list, half of which were founded by immigrants.”
“These New American firms make important contributions to both the U.S. and the global economies. In fiscal year 2023, they collectively generated $8.6 trillion in revenue – an amount that exceeds the GDP of many developed countries, including Japan, Germany, India, and the United Kingdom. In fact, a country with a GDP equal to the revenues of the New American Fortune 500 firms would be the third largest economy in the world, behind only the United States and China.”
“New American Fortune 500 companies are powerful job creators. On average, each one on 2024’s list employs 67,332 workers. Together, they employ over 15.5 million people worldwide – a population that would rank as the fifth largest state in the United States, just after New York but easily beating Pennsylvania. Existing data on all Fortune 500 companies highlights their immense contribution to the economy. According to a 2019 study, these 500 companies in the United States represented over two-thirds of the country’s gross domestic product.”
A study funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Harvard Business School found that “immigrants to the U.S. are more entrepreneurial than the native population and are over-represented among high-growth startups and venture-backed tech firms. In 2019, “immigrants accounted for about 24 percent of entrepreneurs, up from 19 percent in 2007.”
Drum roll, please! Now for the moment everyone has been waiting for: How 1787 proposes we deal with unauthorized immigrants.
Okay everybody. Take a deep breath and don’t immediately flip out when you read this section.
Just please hear us out. We recognize unauthorized immigration is one of our country’s most heated
issues and that some of these ideas are particularly flammable. All we ask is that you keep an open mind.
Two things before we begin this section. First, so often when controversial topics are raised, our deeply ingrained, robotic reflexes kick in and inhibit the constructive, open-minded conversations that are essential to finding creative, sustainable solutions. We need to fight against that instinct here because we have a major challenge to solve.
Second, as you read this section, our hope is that you can see our deep compassion for every single person who risks their lives to come to this country. Almost all these human beings come from countries that have been mired in violence and economic and humanitarian crises for decades. It breaks our hearts. We desperately wish that every person on the planet could live in a place like the United States of America. But not everyone can, and we get that. At the end of the day, even with the most open-armed proposals, there is simply no choice but to turn many people away from this magnificent country.
Sometimes we are confronted with a problem that has no great solution. Therefore, we simply must do the best we can under very challenging circumstances. So it is with our unauthorized immigration situation. Is it ideal to give millions of people what amounts to amnesty in one fell swoop? No. Is it the most realistic solution we have out of a list of really bad ideas? Yes.
We're not going to insult you by trying to disguise amnesty in a less objectionable phrase like “pathway to citizenship.” We are all adults here and you are no fool. We all know these are essentially the same thing, so let’s just cut the innuendo and political double-speak and save everyone time by just being honest and upfront.
That said, we will offer another name for 1787’s plan. Donald Trump will undoubtedly frame it as amnesty, but we call it the “Allow Millions of People to Pay Taxes Since They Are in Our Country Anyway” plan. After all, today unauthorized immigrants don’t even have a special designation under U.S. tax law – so most don’t pay taxes even though we're certain almost all of them happily would.
The Congressional Research Service reports there are somewhere between 10-11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. As of 2019, 58-62 percent of this group had lived here for at least a decade. Around 22-23 percent had lived here for twenty years or more; and 16-17 percent for five to nine years.
These people are not going anywhere – that’s just a fact. Like it or not, this is the reality of our situation.
The bottom line is that we can’t fix our immigration situation unless we clear the deck. The best way – actually, the only way – to do this is to offer a one-shot deal (à la President Ronald Reagan) to every single unauthorized, non-criminal person who is already here.
In 1986, Congress passed – and President Reagan signed – the Immigration Reform and Control Act. This is a great template to use. If unauthorized immigrants can establish that they have resided in the U.S. for five continuous years, they will be granted temporary resident status. This status will allow previously unauthorized immigrants to live, work and travel in the United States legally. The status moves from temporary resident status to permanent residency status after eighteen months and then to citizenship five years later.
Every person will undergo a thorough background check to identify any criminals to be deported (individuals with convictions for a felony or three misdemeanors are ineligible for the program and will be deported right away). Those deemed eligible are required to register for military selective service and will be granted amnesty, which forgives their acts of illegal immigration and other related illegal acts such as driving and working with false documents.
Unlike Reagan’s 1986 plan, those granted temporary resident status will not be required to pay back taxes or pay any fines. These requirements are just not realistic. We’re not doing this for the fun of it, we are trying to solve a problem. We want people to take advantage of this program and most of them simply cannot afford back taxes and fines. For now, the only cost associated with the new status should be the actual cost involved to process the applications.
This offer is a one-shot deal. After we launch our “Allow Millions of People to Pay Taxes Since They Are in Our Country Anyway” plan, we must drastically crack down on any remaining undocumented people who live and work in this country, which will be much easier because there will be fewer people to deal with. Those who choose not to participate in the program will be deported immediately when identified, and they will never again be given the chance to receive legal status in America.
It’s critical we don’t get into this position again and we need to take extensive measures to ensure that we won’t. To that end, we will implement strict prevention mechanisms – including harsh financial fines on employers who employ unauthorized immigrants – and a smart, comprehensive border security strategy.