The U.S. can continue to grow the national economy via greater productivity among American workers, even when migration is cut back, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a House hearing on Tuesday.

“There are two things that affect growth,” Powell told Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fl) during a three-hour hearing at the House Financial Services Committee:

One is growth in the labor force [to get] more people working, and the other thing is productivity [growth to expand] how much they produce per hour worked … You can [fore]see a big increase in productivity, which would mean we don’t need as many workers.

Powell’s migration comments echo other calls for the federal government to abandon the post-1990 economic strategy of growth-by-migration and to instead revive the pre-1990 strategy of growth by productivity, technology, and innovation. President Donald Trump’s migration policies are zig-zagging the nation towards that pre-1990 higher-wage prosperity.

In the hearing, Salazar repeatedly pushed Powell to endorse more migration because she is pushing her business-backed bill to welcome more migrants and white-collar visa workers.

Her bill would revive the pre-Trump federal policy of inflating the U.S. consumer economy with cheap workers, government-funded consumers, and apartment-sharing renters extracted from developing countries.

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