With the nation’s jobless rate at 10 percent and six applicants for every opening, you might think this is the worst possible time for Congress to legalize millions of illegal immigrants. Yet that’s one of the proposals in a new immigration reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. Those who believe you can’t discuss immigration reform in a down economy must also assume that newly legalized immigrants would automatically compete for jobs with U.S. workers, and that the last thing our homegrown workforce needs in tough times is more competition. This is an easy argument to make, but it’s not a very strong one for three reasons.
