Report: U.S. Needs Immigration Boost of High-Skilled Workers

CNN: Highly-skilled foreign-born workers contribute more to the economy than they take away and unless the American government enacts immigration reform, the U.S. "risks falling behing in the global race for talent," according to a report released Wednesday. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas on Wednesday released its 2010 annual report. Attached to the report was an essay authored by two economists who argue that that reform is needed to boost the legal immigration of highly-educated workers to the U.S. "The disproportionate focus on illegal immigration is missing the picture that the legal system of immigration is broken as well," Federal Reserve senior economist Pia Orrenius told CNN. "The cost of ignoring problems with the legal immigration of high-skilled workers in some respects is higher than the costs of illegal immigration." Orrenius and Agnes Scott College economics professor Madeline Zavodny co-authored the essay, "From Brawn to Brains." The essay contains ideas included in a book the two economists co-authored for the American Enterprise Institute in 2010, Zavodny told CNN. The book is entitled "Beside the Golden Door -- U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization."