Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush announced Friday that America needs to reform its immigration policy because “immigrants are more fertile” and can offer the benefit of young labor to the declining U.S. economy.
Bush made the comment while speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority conference Friday.
“Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans,” the Republican said. “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.”
He had previously voiced concerns about the implications of an aging workforce and the low fertility rate in the U.S.
“Ten years from now… we’re going to have fewer workers taking care of a larger number of people that the country has a social contract with to be able to allow them to retire with dignity and purpose,” Bush stated. “We can not do that with the fertility rates that we have in our country. We’re below break even today.”
The former governor noted how Japan, China and several European nations are facing the same problem, but only America has the “immigrant experience and immigrant heritage that allows them to embrace people to come, not because of race or identities based on ethnicity or some divisive idea, but American values and American ideas.”
Bush added that he is hopeful that immigration reform will come out of Washington, saying that allowing “people to come to learn English, to play by our rules, to embrace our values and to pursue their dreams in our country with a vengeance to create more opportunities for all of us” is a “conservative idea.”
“If we do this, we will rebuild our country in a way that will allow us to grow.”
