Greenspan joins call for more immigration to ease workforce shortages
BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Dec 17, 2015 | 9:15 pm
1 min read time
174 wordsAll Latest News, Banking and FinanceFormer Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes the economy would thrive if the United States eased immigration restrictions, CNN Money reported.
Greenspan said a key program for highly skilled workers – the H-1B visa program should be expanded.
“The H-1B visa program is much too small,” Greenspan said Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “If we really wanted to increase productivity, we would really open that program up.”
This year a record 233,000 foreigners applied for only 85,000 available H-1B visas.
Greenspan also said anyone with a doctorate in a scientific field from a U.S. school should be allowed to stay.
In related comments, Greenspan said Congress is to blame for the underperforming economy. Politicians have not only failed to improve immigration laws, but they’ve failed to clean up Social Security and Medicare, too, Greenspan said. That has created a “very unstable fiscal system.”
Those programs are growing at 8 percent a year, a big drain on the economy, Greenspan said.
Read Ames Chamber of Commerce CEO Dan Culhane’s thoughts on expanding immigration here.
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