“As the United States slowly pulls free from a deep recession, a groundbreaking new study concludes that comprehensive immigration reform would provide just the type of boost our economy needs. The Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center released a joint report, Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which shows that legalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform as well as making future flows more flexible would grow the economy by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The stark number cuts into the credibility of claims by immigration restrictionists that immigration reform during an economic recession is implausible. According to research by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, founding director of the North American Integration and Development Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, creating a legalization process for unauthorized workers would, in the long term (10 years) yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product, and in the short term (three years) generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional tax revenue and consumer spending sufficient to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs.”