Not welcome
On the campaign trail, President Trump spoke frequently about what he believed were the damaging effects of immigration for the American economy and way of life.
Now he’s thrown his support to a bill from two Republican U.S. senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, that would slash legal immigration to half of its current level and dramatically reshape the kinds of immigrants accepted into the U.S.
In a speech at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said the bill, called the RAISE Act (“Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy”), “would represent the most significant reform to the immigration system in half a century.”
The RAISE Act would certainly be a very significant change for the U.S. immigration system. Cotton and Perdue’s proposal is to shift the U.S. from a family-based immigration system to what they call one based on merit.
The bill would eliminate immigration preferences for most immigrant family members, including parents, grandparents and adult children and siblings. For immigrants, only their minor children and spouses would continue to have preferences.
The bill would also end a visa lottery system that awards 50,000 green cards a year, primarily to parts of the world that traditionally don’t send as many immigrants to the U.S. — including the African continent. It would cap refugees at 50,000 per year.
In place of our current immigration system, the bill would award points to green card applicants based on factors like their English language skills and education levels.
Perdue and Cotton said in July that the goal is to reduce immigration to the U.S. by 41 percent in the first year, and up to 50 percent by the 10th year. At least they’re honest. The RAISE Act is an immigration-reduction bill. It won’t strengthen the U.S. economy — studies consistently show that immigrants boost the economy.
The merit-based argument doesn’t hold water, either. The countries they noted for having “meritbased” migration, Canada and Australia, admit more than twice the number of immigrants to their countries that the U.S. does, based on percentage of overall population.
As for national security, studies have shown immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than nativeborn Americans do. So this is neither an economic measure nor a safety measure — it’s just a measure to keep out hardworking people who are eager to contribute to the U.S. economy. Congress must reject it.