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Immigration, economy will be focus of St. Rose panel

Albany

Decades ago Hugh Johnson gave a Union College speech about the importance of immigrants to economic growth.

He's still making that argument today.

"This is a big issue," Johnson, an Albany-based money manager who is often quoted in national business media publications, said Tuesday. "I'm blue in the face" from talking about it.

On Friday, Johnson will participate in a panel at The College of Saint Rose about the effects of immigration reform on the national economy. The discussion, free and open to the public, begins at 7:30 a.m. at the Thelma P. Lally School of Education on campus.

Immigration reform isn't likely a topic that'll soon go away, with President Donald Trump making immigration a key part of the economic populism platform that he rode to the White House.

The Trump administration has repeatedly said it would raise America's growth rate, which has slogged since 2009, to 3 percent - a rate not seen since 2005.

But Johnson, and many others, have said that would be impossible without broadening the U.S. immigration system.

"The reason we have slow growth in the U.S. economy is because we have slow growth in the labor force," he said. "And the reason we have slow growth in the labor force is because immigration has slowed. ... It's simple arithmetic."

It's not a new idea: Economists have for years said the United States needs to open its economy to more, not fewer, foreign-born workers as a way to balance the loss of more and more baby boomers to retirement. Without doing so, significant economic growth will be all but impossible, most agree.

That could, in turn, imperil some of the tax reforms being sought by Trump with the backing of many businesses. Large cuts to the corporate tax code, as well as a rollback on so-called "pass through" entities, were widely applauded by the business sector when they were unveiled last week. It's unclear what effect those reforms would have on the federal deficit, but the right-leaning Tax Foundation estimates the corporate tax cuts alone would lower government revenue by $2 trillion over 10 years.

Trump administration officials have said they can balance that revenue loss through, among other things, discretionary spending cuts, ending deductions for state and local property taxes and a sustained, 3 percent growth rate.

"It's inconsistent," Johnson said. "You might be able to give tax relief to U.S. companies, and that's going to help the U.S. economy... But that alone will not get you to 3.2 percent. You better have positive immigration reform, which provides amnesty and allows for increased immigration, or you'll never get it.

"All of this really does affect local companies," he said.

Indeed, business and colleges in the Capital Region have already been shaken by some of the uncertainty emanating from Washington. New York is among the highest recipients of high-skilled foreign workers from the H-1B visa program, which Trump ordered reviews of last month.

More than 93,000 such workers, many of whom are Indians in software development, came to the Empire State last year, according to the Office of Foreign Labor, and Albany's myriad colleges and tech companies routinely employ more than 1,800 such employees.

But Johnson said he doesn't imagine a solution on the horizon due to the highly politicized debate over immigration.

"Its endless and fruitless," he said. "I would be so shocked if we got the kind of immigration reform. ... As long as there are so many votes for Democrats and Republicans in Congress, they'll never get it done."

For more information on the panel, to be held at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, visit http://www.strose.edu.

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Immigration, economy will be focus of St. Rose panel - Albany Times Union