Trump immigration plan seen as bringing `best and brightest'
Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program yesterday to talk about the recent ID fraud arrests and President Trump’s new immigration policy plan:
Q: Several Registry of Motor Vehicles clerks have been arrested for issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
A: I can’t say that I’m not shocked. It is very disturbing that this is happening and this is something that
we have to constantly be on guard for. But these are people in a position of public trust ... and we have to worry about who else has gotten fake identification in the commonwealth.
Q: The national news of the day is this plan from President Trump that would go after legal immigration as well, sharply curtailing the ability of American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country.
A: Well, this is a really exciting proposal for immigration reform that will modernize our legal immigration system and better balance the ability of people to sponsor very close family members with a streamlining and modernization of our merit-based immigration system so that it’s not driven just by people who are sponsored for jobs, but by making it so that the best and the brightest people who are applying in any given year based on a point system that has been devised by two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Purdue of Georgia. ... I think it’s a great idea. It requires some of the chain migration categories that frankly are what have turned our legal immigration system into basically a low-skilled worker program where about half of all legal immigrants now are dependent on welfare benefits.
Q: I think the thing that most people have gotten upset about is the Englishspeaking aspect. A: This merit-based system, which is modeled on the Canadian and Australian systems, gives people points for various qualities that they bring and they have, and most notably it is based on education and skills that they have. But also they will get extra points if they have a real good capability to speak English. ... So the understanding is that people who already speak English, wherever they are from ... are already going to be able to hit the ground running when they get here, and are going to have a higher chance of success. And they will also get points for their ages, so we will be bringing in a younger set of immigrants rather than people at the end of their careers.
‘(It) will modernize our legal immigration system.’ — JESSICA VAUGHAN, of the Center for Immigration Studies