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If an immigrant comes here, and they're willing to create jobs, and they're willing to contribute to our economy, we have to make it easier for the kinds of immigrants we want, because that is the past of America; that's our greatness, and that will continue to be our greatness in the future.

Highly skilled immigrants are critical to innovation and are important contributors to economic growth in the United States.

The United States is locked in a new arms race for that most precious resource - the future entrepreneurs upon whom economic growth depends. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation.

If cheap immigrant labor is made unavailable, employers can hire Americans at a higher wage, or replace low-wage immigrant workers with technology and automation, which will create a smaller number of skilled jobs for Americans.

Hiring foreigners is more expensive and more difficult than hiring locals, because of the visa fees and long lead times for visa processing. And companies face a backlash by anti-immigrant groups for hiring foreigners. So they do it only because they have to.

We should make it as easy as possible to be able to get a legal work visa - not citizenship, not a green card. Just a work visa, with a background check and a Social Security card so that applicable taxes would get paid.

Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.

Immigrants have historically been an entrepreneurial bunch.

Stop pretending there's anything wrong with businesspeople hiring diligent laborers who will work for less. Let employers sponsor any worker and argue for why that worker should be given citizenship. Such a vetting mechanism would naturally promote the best and hardest-working.

It is actually costlier to hire an immigrant. And yet the farm worker is almost invariably an immigrant. You can't pay an American to pick blueberries.