In a certain, dreary light, right now seems like a terrible time to rewrite immigration law to invite tens of thousands of new skilled immigrants to move to the United States. Unemployment is still high. The recovery feels painfully slow. At last count, 10.5 million people who already live here and who’ve been looking for work haven’t been able to find it.

“I think people are scared,” says Beth Ann Bovino, the U.S. Chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “There are a lot of misconceptions about what it means when we have immigrant talent come to the U.S. I completely understand the worries about ‘are we going to bring all of these people over? Are they going to take our jobs?’”

via Why more skilled immigration would be good for American workers, too.