Most of us have read the famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty that says America has always welcomed “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Those beautiful words speak to why so many immigrants want to come to America and to the opportunities our country can provide for them. But we sometimes forget how much immigrants do for all the Americans who are already here. The vast majority of immigrants come here to work and to pursue the American Dream. They do the essential jobs that must be done on our farms, in our factories, and in our communities. And they bring an unrivaled spirit of entrepreneurship: almost half of America’s Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, and immigrants are twice as likely to start a new business as a native-born American. This is why it is so important for our next president and Congress to address immigration in two ways. ATTRACT MORE LEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO WILL BE HARDWORKING TAXPAYERS America doesn’t have enough people to do the work that needs to be done. As of April 2023, there were nearly twice as many unfilled jobs (10.1 million) as there were in 2015. Ninety-one percent of construction firms had projects delayed due to worker shortages according to a 2022 poll by the Association of General Contractors, while farmers are growing less and seeing more crops die without enough workers to help. More unfilled jobs are bad for businesses and consumers: lower output, higher costs, more inflation, longer wait times. The pandemic exacerbated these problems, but they’ve been building for a long time: • The labor force participation rate—the proportion of the working-age population that’s either employed or seeking a job—plateaued in the 1990s and has trended downward since then. As of May 2023, the participation rate stands at 62.5 percent—a low not seen since the 1970s. • It will only get more challenging from here because: • Our population is aging. By 2040, one in five Americans is projected to be over 65 years old. Soon, there will be too few taxpayers taking care of too many Social Security and Medicare recipients. • Our population could soon start shrinking. American women are having too few children, on average, to keep the population—and workforce— growing. America remains the number-one dream destination for immigrants from across the world, and that is a huge advantage for us over countries like China, which faces its own aging workforce, but foreign workers have little interest in moving there. We should double down on attracting hard workers from around the world to join the American experiment and contribute to our world-class economy. PROVIDE A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP FOR THE DREAMERS Across America, there are roughly two million people who were brought to the US illegally as children by their parents. They’re called Dreamers, and most American citizens think they’re every bit as American as someone who was born here. • The median Dreamer is 24 years old and has been here since they were six years old. • More than 95 percent of Dreamers attend or graduated from an American high school, 250,000 are in college, and hundreds if not thousands have served in our armed forces. • Nine in 10 Dreamers speak only English or speak it well or very well. • Thirty thousand are health-care workers—that’s enough to staff more than 100 average-sized Veterans Affairs health facilities. For years, Dreamers have lived in limbo because Congress hasn’t created a permanent path for them to stay here or become citizens, which has forced successive White Houses and the federal courts to throw together ad hoc solutions that let them stay temporarily. It’s just common sense that the White House and Congress should pass legislation that lets Dreamers stay permanently. But American citizenship is a privilege, not a right, so to become a citizen, Dreamers should need to: • Have a clean criminal record. • Be pursuing an education, working, or serving in the military. • Enter a process that takes five years before they can apply for citizenship.