Green card bill could hit state
Plan’s limits may impact economy, racial diversity
A bill backed by President Trump that would sharply reduce the number of immigrants who could legally enter the U.S. raised questions in California over possible effects on families, demographics and key sectors of the economy.
On Wednesday, Trump portrayed his support of the bill as a step toward fulfilling his campaign promise to help working-class Americans by limiting the number of lowerskilled immigrants who he says are taking their jobs. The bill would cut the number of immigrants allowed to obtain permanent residency and give greater weight to English skills, education and career achievements in doling out the more than 100,000 employmentbased visas issued annually.
“This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and puts America first,” Trump said at a White House news conference where he was joined by the measure’s sponsors, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia.
Even as immigration experts tried to determine how the measure would affect the state, senior California Democrats in Washington promised to do what they could to see that it
never becomes law.
“From the start, President Trump has pushed a hateful, senseless antiimmigrant agenda that instills fear in our communities, weakens our nation, and dishonors our values,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the way to fix the “broken immigration system” was comprehensive reform. “This bill doesn’t achieve that, and I will do all I can to oppose it,” she said.
The bill would bar people from sponsoring siblings, parents and adult children who are citizens of other countries from immigrating to the U.S. and obtaining green cards that confer legal residency status. They could still sponsor spouses and minor children trying to immigrate.
The legislation would reduce the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and eliminate a program under which 50,000 green cards a year are given to immigrants from underrepresented countries, such as African nations.
More than 200,000 people in California received permanent residency status in fiscal 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available. The California total accounted for one-fifth of all green cards issued nationwide that year.
Of the national total, 64 percent of recipients entered the country through some form of family-based preference, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Federal government data indicate that around half of those would have been excluded under the Trump-backed legislation, known as the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act.
Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a Santa Clara University law professor who specializes in immigration, said one likely effect of the bill in California would be a gradual diminishing of the state’s ethnic and racial diversity.
“It is unmistakably the mark of a president engaged in a nativist and isolationist culture war,” said Gulasekaram, who pointed to Trump’s efforts to ban travel from six mostly Muslim countries as fitting into the pattern. “His plans are red meat for those in his constituency who believe in a white nationalist vision of America, where the only acceptable immigrants, if any, are the already rich and educated ones.”
The White House said the goal was not to change the ethnic or racial mix of immigration, but the skill level of those who are allowed into the country. The bill would create a point system for those seen as being well-positioned to succeed economically, such as having college degrees, job offers or “entrepreneurial initiative,” similar to policies in countries such as Canada and Australia.
“The RAISE Act helps realize President Trump’s vision of making America great again by making immigration great again as well,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors more restrictive policies. “It provides a pathway for a modern, smarter immigration system while protecting those Americans struggling to make ends meet.”
However, the administration has also sought to curb the H-1B visa program, which enables 85,000 highly skilled workers to spend three to six years at sponsoring companies in the U.S. The visas are heavily used by Bay Area tech firms that rely on them to fill engineering positions.
The RAISE Act does not mention H-1B or other visas popular with Silicon Valley companies. But one expert said the bill’s restrictions on familybased immigration could deter highly skilled foreigners from coming to the U.S. in the first place.
“If there are people who are talented and want to bring over family members, and it is harder for them to do that, that is a disincentive for them to immigrate to the U.S.,” said Peter Leroe-Muñoz, vice president of technology and innovation policy for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business organization that represents many technology firms.
One immigrant-reliant sector of the state’s economy that probably wouldn’t be affected by the bill is agriculture. Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis, said few of the workers who harvest the state’s produce are permanent residents.
“That’s not how agriculture gets its workers,” Martin said. Instead, he said, most farmworkers are in the country without authorization or are here on temporary visas, which would not be affected by the Republican bill.
For refugee advocates in the state, the administration’s support of the RAISE Act is the latest in a long line of setbacks this year. The bill would cap the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. at 50,000 a year — a drop from the 85,000 allowed in fiscal 2016 and 70,000 in the several years before that.
“It is incredibly disheartening to see that the U.S. would cap refugees to 50K,” said Karen Ferguson, head of the Northern California office of the International Rescue Committee. “During this period of global refugee crisis, now is the time for the U.S. to lead, not linger. We see every day at the IRC that the local community is eager to welcome new arrivals and we continue to see these new Americans thrive — enriching us all.”