Immigration: The Key to a Green Economy

A recent report published by the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council, authored by Richard T. Herman and Robert L. Smith, Why Immigration Can Drive the Green Economy, discusses how the connection between immigration and the development and commercialization of alternative fuel sources is rarely discussed among policymakers. Yet it is this very connection that will help the United States lead the way towards cleaner, less expensive energy. Although policymakers imagine that the development of renewable energy will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, most fail to understand that much of the clean-energy talent remains abroad. Thus, experts urge that expanding our own clean-energy industry will require working with people overseas, in countries that have been pursuing alternative fuel sources for several decades already. Unfortunately, tough immigration restrictions make this type of foreign collaboration difficult, if not impossible.