The U.S. immigration system is broken. Voices on all sides of this debate can agree on that, if not where to cast the blame. But our need for economic growth still dictates that migration at the sort of levels we’re seeing now must continue in order to keep the U.S. population rising enough to provide the labor we need and keep the economy healthy.

The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan fiscal scorekeepers for Congress, issued a report last month that was an eye-opener for many. CBO projected $7 trillion of additional economic growth over the coming decade thanks to the net influx of migrants, which the agency hadn’t accounted for previously in its assessments.

This country’s native population is aging, and the workforce is suffering as a result. Thanks mostly to net immigration gains, CBO projects the U.S. labor force will add 5.2 million workers by 2033. Shut off that source of growth, as some extremist voices are urging, and our labor force won’t be sufficient.

Still, statistical findings from a federal agency, even when they’re as consequential as those, rarely command immediate attention.

That’s why we were struck when we heard the same message with our own ears recently from Brian Moynihan, CEO of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest bank. Moynihan met with the Tribune Editorial Board to discuss a wide variety of issues, but the one that lingered the most with us was his message on immigration.

“It’s a shame we can’t fix it,” Moynihan said of our lousy system. And he had some very good reasons for saying so.

Our birthrate being what it is, U.S. population growth without the influx is only around 0.5% annually, he told us. It needs to be more like 1.5% to keep the economy healthy (and to meet our massive health care and retirement obligations to our growing senior citizen population). “It’s a pure math question,” he said, noting that U.S. women already participate so broadly in the workforce now that adding to that number is no longer a viable source of major growth. So that leaves a need for immigrants.

As longtime head of one of the few true national banking franchises in the U.S., Moynihan is in a unique position to opine on this. He sees more real-time data on the economy and consumer behavior than most. We should listen to him — and other business figures who’ve long advocated for more immigrants, not fewer.

In Washington, D.C., many extremists see Americans’ worries about the chaos at the southern border as a political issue to be exploited rather than a problem to be solved. We saw the pitiful results of this last month when a comprehensive border-security bill failed to proceed even to a debate in the U.S. Senate. House Speaker Mike Johnson already had declared the measure dead on arrival in his chamber.

Why? Donald Trump, then well on his way to becoming what he is now — the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party — ordered his supporters in Congress to kill the measure, which President Joe Biden had said he would support.

That legislation would have given the executive branch more legal tools. That, in turn, could have helped bolster public confidence that the U.S. government can better control who enters this country and ensure existing laws are enforced.

Increased public confidence is necessary to transform immigration from something scary and negative to what it should be — a critical part of keeping this improbable economic expansion going, even in the face of inflation and high interest rates.

It’s not just in the halls of Congress where the words of Moynihan and other business leaders ought to be better appreciated. Those in City Hall should do so as well. We thought about this as we digested the depressing but unsurprising news that in Cook County, Illinois, the population fell by an estimated 24,000 in 2023, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates — and that was despite tens of thousands of migrant arrivals.

The migrant surge in big cities like Chicago and New York — a product in part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s cynical but highly effective desire to score political points — has largely been viewed as a negative for cities. A crisis that strained resources.

For our more diplomatic voices, it has been an an unwelcome distraction. For our most xenophobic and myopic, it has been an invasion of undesirable outsiders.

That it’s been a crisis no one can dispute. Buses transporting mostly impoverished people from other countries, many of whom don’t speak English, at times and to places that are unpredictable is costly and challenging to manage. Local leadership has more than struggled to do so. And it’s understandable that longtime residents of American cities worry about the impact on their own kids in school and/or feel that resources have been diverted away from their own, very real needs. We’d also note that most countries pay more attention to immigrants’ skill levels, insuring an influx of people who can do the jobs America needs doing the most.

But when the dust settles and we move on to other crises — that could be well into the future, we acknowledge — it is our hope that this parade of asylum-seeking migrants will be viewed as an influx of productive residents and an economic shot in the arm for regions that need it. Perhaps those who have come here under these less than ideal conditions and yet decide to stay and make a life for themselves will be able ultimately to testify to what a great nation this has been for them.

Brian Moynihan got us thinking about taking the longer view: More workers. More cultural contributions. More taxpayers, sharing our burdens.

— Chicago Tribune via TNS