Why Legal Immigration is Better than Rick Santorum Thinks

Rick Santorum 

Rick Santorum is known as a "staunch anti-abortion activist and opponent of same-sex marriage." However, he recently decided to throw in his two cents on immigration. At a meet and greet in Council Bluffs, he stated that he "believes the nation’s immigration policies need to be reformed so that fewer unskilled laborers are admitted into this country to compete with blue-collar Americans." While his labor concerns are well-founded, this idea would actually injure the very people he is attempting to help.

America itself was built on immigration. Ironically, Mr. Santorum is the grandson of a man who "immigrated to America from Italy in the 1920s." Some may argue that these are new times, and that immigrants only take jobs from American workers. However, according to several studies, immigrants do not "cause any sizeable decrease in wages and employment of U.S.- born citizens and may instead raise wages and lower prices." 

This company was founded by an immigrant to the U.S.

Thanks for reading, please comment your thoughts on this issue.

In addition, according to sources compilted by the Hamilton Project, immigrants are 30% more likely than American born citizens to start their own business and are, among people with post-collegiate degrees, three times more likely to file a patent. For example, eBay, Google, and Yahoo! were all founded by immigrants to the U.S. If we had reduced legal immigration before 1979, it is likely that I would not be able to post this blog on Blogger, as it is the 

product of a legal immigrant.  In conclusion, there are very few reasons to reduce the amount of legal immigration. To keep it at it's current level would be beneficial to workers, Americans, and hopeful Americans. 

Main Article
http://www.omaha.com/news/politics/santorum-would-seek-to-reduce-legal-immigration/article_19acbc79-ae7f-56fb-85c2-a933eebd5848.html

Other Sources
http://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/what_immigration_means_for_u.s._employment_and_wages/
http://www.dagliano.unimi.it/media/12-Ottaviano-Peri-2008.pdf
http://www.dagliano.unimi.it/media/12-Ottaviano-Peri-2008.pdf
http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/new-immig.pdf

Patents granted over the period 1998-2003. Hunt and Gauthier-Loiselle (2003), Table 1
Fairlie, R.W., “Estimating the Contribution of Immigrant Business Owners to the U.S. Economy,” Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy (Nov 2008)
http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/09_immigration2.pdf

Pictures
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/03/07/former-google-engineer-claims-she-was-sexually-harassed-google-did-nothing-about-it (sorry about the url, i just thought it was a cool picture)
http://www.omaha.com/news/politics/santorum-would-seek-to-reduce-legal-immigration/article_19acbc79-ae7f-56fb-85c2-a933eebd5848.html