Can 100,000 More Immigrants Solve America’s Jobs Problem?

But if the U.S. decided that jobs mattered more, would more stimulus spending be the answer? I think the answer to that is no and that the best thing we can do to create new jobs is to remove the legal roadblocks that block U.S. start-ups by immigrants who get an advanced engineering or science degree here but can’t stay here.

Tim Geithner has won the battle for Obama’s economic policy. As the Washington Post reports, advisors like Christina Romer, who favored a much bigger stimulus bill to create jobs in 2009, are long gone.

And Geithner has prevailed with Obama arguing that deficits and debt are the biggest problem America faces. With a decision on the debt ceiling looming on August 2, there is little doubt that some combination of increased taxes and reduced spending will become reality later in the summer. Obama even proposed a plan that would cut the deficit by $4 trillion in the next 12 years (two years longer than Geithner wanted).