The foundation of any country’s national security is its economy.
With a weakening economy in the U.S, particularly while the economies of China and India continue to grow, America’s national security is at risk.
As Edward Alden, a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations writes,
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“The engine of that economic growth is innovation, the capacity of Americans to be the first to invent, design and reap the profits from the next generation of technologies that will transform the way we live. As President Obama put it in his introduction to the strategy paper: “Simply put, we must see American innovation as a foundation of American power.”
That’s where immigration comes in.
In his “National Security Strategy” recently delivered to Congress, President Obama makes the argument that the strength of America’s economy (and by extension, its national security) depends in no small measure on America’s ability to act as a magnet for the world’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and highly-skilled talent.
Alden writes,
“The National Security Strategy (NSS), which is sent to Congress every four years, is designed to lay out in broad terms the administration’s philosophy on what is needed to protect the vital interests of the United States. It generally focuses on short and long-term military and other security threats. The most famous NSS, which was released by the Bush administration in 2002, created the rationale for the subsequent invasion of Iraq by stating that the United States would act to pre-empt potential security threats.
That’s the only way in which immigration has ever figured in previous administration strategy papers – as a threat. Most have made some passing reference to the need to control illegal immigration. The Clinton administration’s first strategy paper also warned that American openness to immigration raised the danger of economic espionage. The Bush NSS of 2002 was entirely silent on the issue.
But the Obama administration’s strategy shows a deeper understanding of the contribution of immigrants to America’s national security. The paper, for the first time, places immigration reform in the broader context of U.S. national interests. It starts with an obvious but all too often overlooked point: that America’s economy is the foundation of its national security. The United States will be unable to meet its security and political commitments around the world unless the economy recovers and grows more strongly in the future.
The engine of that economic growth is innovation, the capacity of Americans to be the first to invent, design and reap the profits from the next generation of technologies that will transform the way we live. As President Obama put it in his introduction to the strategy paper: “Simply put, we must see American innovation as a foundation of American power.”
That’s where immigration fits in. The United States has been alone among the world’s big powers in its ability to attract and retain the most talented immigrants from across the world, and it has been a remarkable windfall. Some 45 percent of the nation’s science and engineering Ph.D.s, and 65 percent of its computer science doctorates, are earned by students who were born abroad. America easily leads the world in the number of patents issued each year, and a quarter of those go to immigrant scientists and inventors, a hugely disproportionate number.
The Obama strategy, while hardly sanguine about the many economic challenges facing the United States, explicitly recognizes the strengths that come from such diversity. Immigration, the paper argues, must be part of the overall American strategy for strengthening its human capital. Improved schools, better science and math training, increased international education and exchange, and the reform of immigration laws are all part of a strategy to “ensure that the most innovative ideas take root in America.”
“Our ability to innovate, our ties to the world, and our economic prosperity depend on our nation’s capacity to welcome and assimilate immigrants,” the paper says.”
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On a related note, I have co-written a paper on how a new immigration system could accelerate the American path to energy independence and greater national security by welcoming more of the world’s top energy scientists and researchers.
Many good proposals on fixing immigration to turbocharge America’s economy have been offered.
Congress, however, continues to play politics over sound policy and national interests.
For decades, Congress has declined to craft an immigration system that makes the American economy stronger.
While we wait for Congress to do its job on immigration reform, the American economy continues to sputter, Asian and oil-producing economies continue to strengthen, and the interests of national security take a back seat.