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Should US sell citizenship rights?

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    Time for a market-based solution to immigration reform?

  • Duration 3:34
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Well Sam -- money.

-- forget all those complex immigration laws our next guest says foreigners should be able to fly.

United States citizenship for our.

We'll let him tell him.

Edward -- here.

Is a former chief economy economic advisor to president George W.

Bush and his senior fellow with the Hoover into -- Institution joins us right now from Palo Alto -- yet.

Good morning happy to be with you thanks good to have you so there you are suggesting.

That immigrants should be able to buy US citizenship for how much.

Well are the price that we said it's 50000 dollars that.

The reason is that they are really a few goals when you're thinking about immigration the first thing -- wanna do is we want to make sure that we get.

-- immigrants who are talented who contribute to our economy and who also make themselves better off by coming.

We also want to have a system that is able to deal with the almost eleven million illegals that are currently in the current country right now and then the third is that we wanted to be a fair system -- that while.

You know this system sounds a bit radical and charging people for admission.

May sound like it's less fair in fact I would argue that it's much more fair because it creates an open environment where people.

Who could never come from other countries now are able to come in now what would say.

There are a lot of people international residents who could afford it but -- say there are people who could not are you suggesting some sort of a loan program.

Exactly so one of the things we wouldn't permit is too.

Have people be able to pay this off over time so for example if you take and individual.

Say -- give you an example specific example that we did when I was.

Chairman of the council economic advisors at the White House we studied.

How much individuals earn say in Mexico and relatively unskilled labor in Mexico on how much they -- in the United States.

And the difference is about 101000 dollars a year quite significant so.

Even if he'd adjust that for differences in the cost of living between the US and Mexico -- it still means that someone who comes in at 1820 years old could pay this off.

Over a 1015 year period and still make a lot of money on the -- so would be very well worthwhile for those individuals to come -- so you know in order to make sure that we don't get only the rich that we would allow financing over the top over time.

Okay so you'd have some sort of -- loan officer and you figure it all out.

That some people really like this idea because number one it does encourage immigration and we we need skill labor in this country number -- Your suggestion could raise we've got a graphic to show it.

Fifteen billion dollars each and every year.

If we were to charge people five you know 50000 dollars to become US citizens.

Right that's right at.

Now of course it depends on how many coming in and what we would expect is at least during the first few years we get probably more than that one million or so that are coming in legally right now.

Because there is a backlog day as you know there's a large Q of people who would love to come into the United States would mean that everybody wants to play for.

And that so for the first few years we might even take -- a good bit more revenue than that.

But over time we would expect this to level off -- somewhere between 1000000 and one and a half million per year.

Particularly.

When we transform those who are coming in illegally right now in -- individuals who would then come in legally.

Well it is quite a suggestion let's see what happens and was here during and it's from Palo Alto where.

Sun still hasn't come up out there -- 10 minutes before 6 o'clock western time sir thank you very much.

Thanks a -- nice -- if it -- to see you.

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