DOLLARS & SENSE:
Rupert Murdoch and Mayor Bloomberg make their points in Boston yesterday. (
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BOSTON — News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch teamed up with Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to urge the presidential candidates and Congress to get serious about immigration reform, saying the nation’s economic future depends on it.
“It takes a little courage, but it can be done,” Murdoch said. “Just tear up the spreadsheets and just do it.”
At a Boston forum on immigration policy, the two business giants expressed the need for sensible reforms that could create new American jobs.
They said the current fractured political debate has kept sensible immigration-reform legislation from becoming law, handicapping the economy and arming America’s competitors with the world’s best workers.
“People don’t come here to put up their feet and collect welfare,” Bloomberg said.
“They come here to work. And if there are no jobs, they don’t come here.”
Hizzoner said that neither President Obama nor GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has addressed the issue, and added that the polarizing debate over what to do with illegal immigrants has stymied action.
Bloomberg, a native New Englander who was born in nearby Medford, Mass., hailed Australian-born Murdoch as an example of what immigrants can bring to the economic table in the United States.
Murdoch, meanwhile, emphasized the drive to succeed that most immigrants bring, and said the newcomers can inspire everyone around them.
“An immigrant is more likely to start a small business than a non-immigrant,” he said.
“They want to dream the American dream. They have formed the character of this country that we must not let go.”
The forum was sponsored by the Partnership for a New American Economy, co-chaired by Bloomberg and Murdoch.
The participants made reference to a new partnership report finding that immigrant businesses last year collectively generated more than $775 billion in revenue and $100 million in income and employed one of every 10 people working for private companies.
The partnership’s report — “Open for Business: How Immigrants are Driving Business Creation in the United States” — also pointed out that newcomers are making more progress as entrepreneurs. While the entrepreneurship rate of native-born Americans has slowly declined over the past 15 years, the rate for immigrants has climbed by more than 50 percent, according to the study.
Those businesses are usually smaller than the ones started by American-born citizens. Even so, immigrant start-ups employ one out of every 10 workers in privately owned companies.
Those kinds of numbers transcend any kind of partisan politics, the participants said.
“We have to get beyond politics and antiquated notions about immigration if we are serious about attracting and retaining the best talent in America,” Murdoch said.
News Corp. owns The Post.
Additional reporting by David Seifman