The new report by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda on "The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform" released jointly by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center is very timely and instructive. The Chamber supports comprehensive immigration reform for some of the same economic reasons outlined in the report—it generates an annual increase in U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

More importantly, as Dr. Hinojosa-Ojeda points out, the last attempt at immigration reform did not succeed in curbing illegal immigration because it "failed to create flexible legal limits on immigration that were capable of responding to ups and downs in future U.S. labor demand," relying instead only on "employer sanctions."

Thus, the Chamber only supports comprehensive immigration reform legislation that includes a new future workers program to ensure that employers can obtain, with proper safeguards, the workers they need to remain competitive in a global economy, as long as any new employment verification system is workable and not too onerous on employers.

However, the Chamber does continue to oppose legislation that either approaches employment verification with an over reliance on new private rights of action against employers or attempts to create a commission to determine employment-based immigration policies and numbers, as proposed by the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.