12 June 2009

Expert says great benefits from US immigrants

An economic analyst in the US spoke about future of the US and California economies at the annual conference of The Indus Entrepreneurs last month, saying the country was the loser if they couldn’t keep skilled immigrants.

Tom Campbell, a former state Senator and U.S. Congressman and ex-state director of finance under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, also discussed the positives and negatives of the current fiscal situation in the US at the conference, The India West reported.

American immigration, both illegal and legal, was a hot issue at the moment, Campbell said, but there were great benefits to be gained from qualified US immigrants.

“The US benefits from drawing into our country the very best the world has to offer. I have seen many excellent students at Berkeley and Stanford who had to leave our country upon completing an advanced degree when they would have preferred to stay; and our country has been the loser as a result.”

“Just as we must be careful against increased illegal immigration, we must safeguard opportunities for qualified immigrants to come and make our country better. I do favor a switch in immigration policy more toward the qualified categories, over pure family reunification.”

On the positive side in the economay, “housing prices in California,” he said, while they have fallen dramatically, are “still beating the consumer price index.”

“Productivity,” Campbell said, “has held up compared to the 1980 recession and the “dot-com bust made us more nimble.”

The main negative, he said, is the huge number of dollars the US Treasury is pumping into the economy, because of how long it will take to “pay it back” and the measures the federal government will eventually have to take when it has to “take the money back out of the system.”

---

The American Visa Bureau is an independent consulting company specialising in American visa and immigration services.