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At a policy forum here at Cato on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos

Gautierz spoke about the need for comprehensive immigration reform in America

and about what such an overhaul might entail.

Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, Dan Griswold comments.

How can we turn our immigration problem into a competitive advantage?

Well, we do have an immigration problem.

We have 12 million people here illegally, but let's not lose sight of the larger fact that immigration

has been a tremendous benefit to the U.S. economy and gives us an advantage in the global economy. Immigrants fill

niches in the labor market on the high end. We think of computer programmers and

college physics professors, but also on the lower end of the skill spectrum in important industries like landscaping and construction and retail and food processing and cleaning.

What immigrants do is they provide flexibility and dynamism to the U.S. economy.

They're a blessing demographically.

A lot of other advanced countries are facing the specter of a demographic implosion, you know,

falling birth rates, rapidly aging populations.

Immigration helps us maintain a healthy growth rate of about 1% and a healthy growth rate in our workforce so that our gross domestic product and our weight in the global economy can continue to expand.

What kind of public support is out there for a comprehensive immigration reform?

Well, the public is concerned about it. Everybody's concerned. The fact that 12 million people

are living here without documents and that number is growing by half a million a year and

we're apprehending you

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