Despite the overwhelming Republican opposition to President Obama's proposed illegal immigrant amnesty plan, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said on Wednesday that passing such legislation will help grow the economy.
Not addressing the immigration system, according to Bush, has "done us harm economically," he said to a group of business owners in North Carolina, reported the New York Times. "Fixing a system that doesn't work is a big thing that I think will restore and sutain economic growth for this country."
Bush said that if the argument was framed that way, he doesn't think there would be as big of a debate among Republican Party members. "My hope is with a Republican-controlled Senate, we can begin to see a conversation about how to go about doing that."
Bush claimed in April that many who come to the U.S. illegally do so out of an "act of love" for their family back home. Therefore, Bush said, they should be held to a different standard than immigrants who cross borders or overstay visas, according to the Washington Post.
"The way I look at this -- and I'm going to say this, and it'll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn't come legally, they come to our country because their families -- the dad who loved their children -- was worried that their children didn't have food on the table," reported the Washington Post. "And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it's not a felony. It's an act of love. It's an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn't rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families."
Harvard economist George Borjas claims that immigration does make the economy significantly larger, with "almost all of this increase in GDP accuring to the immigrants themselves as a payment for their labor services." However, Borjas also notes that "economic theory predicts that immigration will redistribute income by lowering the wages of competing American workers and increasing the wages of complementary American works as well as profits for business owners and other 'users' of immigrant labor."
Obama has stated he will decide whether he will use executive action to provide amnesty to immigrants after summer.
