Someone once told me that it’s not appropriate to quote yourself to prove a point. Luckily, I work in politics, so I naturally just ignore anyone whose opinion I disagree with (ba dum bum…just kidding!)
Given the big news over the last few days about the potential for comprehensive immigration reform legislation in Congress, I thought I’d remind all of you loyal State of Trade readers about the importance of immigration reform in the context of international trade…specificially, why should Washington state trade stakeholders care about immigration reform.
And so, it is without further ado that I direct you to read a State of Trade blog post from August 18, 2011 entitled “What’s the Relationship Between Immigration and International Trade?” It’s a blog post that I wrote about the relationship between immigration and internationally trade (cleverly titled, eh?). I encourage you to read it.
One last point: the above blog post lists the top three reasons why Washington cares about immigration reform in relation to trade, but didn’t quantify the impact. Thanks to the International Competitiveness Strategy for Washington State, we now can. A one year count by the American Community Survey (2010 1-year estimates) identifies 886,262 total foreign-born residents in our state, or 13.1% of Washington population. Immigration reform has the potential to significantly increase that in ways that benefit our economy and our international competitiveness.
