Jon Baselice, right, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speaks at a conference in Washington, D.C., held by the National Immigration Forum. (Marty Schladen | Ohio Capital Journal)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President-elect Donald Trump made a visit to the nation’s capital last week to meet with congressional Republicans. As he did, a group of economic leaders meeting nearby had a simple message for him and his incoming administration: You can’t have robust economic growth without robust immigration.

Trump cruised to victory on Nov. 5 after a campaign that was based mostly around attacking immigration and criticizing the economy under Democratic President Joe Biden. Speaking at an event held Wednesday by the National Immigration Forum, a prominent Republican economist said the two issues are inextricably tied, just not in the way that the Trump campaign suggested.

“You can’t be America First by putting immigration last,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a White House economist under President George H.W. Bush and chief economic advisor to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “The numbers just don’t add up.”

Holtz-Eakin and the other panelists stressed that with declining class sizes in American elementary schools, the country needs immigration to buttress the workforce and spur economic growth.

“Anyone who is arithmetically informed knows immigration is central to our future,” Holtz-Eakin said. “The demography is baked in the cake. Native-born Americans have such low fertility that in the absence of immigration, this country will look like Japan. It will get very, very old and smaller and smaller and smaller. We’ll lose our economic vitality.”

On the campaign trail, Trump promised rapid mass deportations of immigrants who aren’t here legally or who will be declared to be undocumented in the future. But Jon Baselice, vice president for immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that likely isn’t possible.

“If you look at the resources they have, and at the resources they’re likely to get, they need to set expectations in a realistic way,” he said. “If they’re looking to deport millions of people in very short order, they’re likely to fail at that.”

Meanwhile, a dearth of immigrants can come with a serious economic downside.

The Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce surveys employers in the state each year. Starting about a decade ago, the issue of having enough workers shot up the list of concerns, said Alex Halper, vice president of governmental affairs for the organization.

“We’ve had historically small kindergarten classes the last two years, and by far the fastest-growing demographic is 80 and older,” Halper said. “At the same time, out of 100 job openings, we have 56 people looking for work in Pennsylvania. We simply don’t have the people to fill positions for Pennsylvania employers.”

Immigrants are particularly crucial to the tech sector, panelists said.

Pearl Chang Esau is founder and CEO of the Arizona group Shàn strategies, which advises businesses on how to “improve their economic, environmental, and societal impact.” She said “dreamers” — non-citizens who came to the United States at an early age who have been allowed to stay under an executive order by former President Barack Obama — are an important piece of the tech puzzle.

“Thirty percent of dreamers in college are pursuing a STEM education, and they’re graduating without the ability to work,” she said. “So it is a no-brainer to capture that population into our workforce.”

There seemed to be widespread apprehension at the conference after Trump won on a starkly anti-immigration agenda.

“Many of us sense a giant mountain that lies before us,” Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said as she opened the conference.

But U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., said he hoped a coalition of business, law enforcement and faith leaders — which he called “business, badges and the Bible” — would create pressure for bipartisan solutions that polling indicates the public overwhelmingly wants. Suozzi said he hopes that polarization on the issue will decrease so that a critical mass of the public can see immigration as the nuanced issue that it is.

“Anybody who says, ‘Why don’t you just…’ doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” he said, to applause.

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