We've all heard the reasons this country needs Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Our system is broken. We are splitting the families of people who simply came to this country to build their American Dream. Our farms do not have a stable workforce. Far too many high tech companies are short the workers they need to continue to innovate. Our schools continue to attract the best and brightest from around the world, but we don't have a system that keeps talent here. We know what needs to be fixed and why, but what we aren't talking about as much is, what happens once we fix the problems?
Very simply, our economy will skyrocket.
Report after report, study after study says the same thing: Successful implementation of Comprehensive Immigration Reform will cut the deficit, create manufacturing and job opportunities nationwide, put more than 100,000 Americans back to work every year for ten years and explode our GDP, increasing it by nearly one full percentage point. That means $832 billion being pumped into our economy over the first 10 years.
Those are the results we will see from Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and they are what I will talk about on the Floor of the U.S. House tonight, along with more than a dozen other freshmen members of Congress. This past election voters sent us to Washington to solve problems like our broken immigration system and that's what we want to do. We're going to start by changing the conversation. It's time to make immigration reform a reality, and it's absolutely time to let people know what that reality will mean for their pocketbooks.
Join us tonight around 5:30 p.m. (after the last vote in the House). Watch us live on CSPAN and on twitter. Follow me at @RepCardenas. Then, we'll be tweeting at #CIRmeansjobs, and we want to make you part of the conversation. If you have a question for myself or another member you see on the floor, tweet it to us with the hashtag #CIRmeansjobs. If we think it will help advance the conversation, I'll read it on the House Floor, and you'll get your answer.
It's time to look to our future, and realize that with Comprehensive Immigration Reform, that future only gets brighter.