Our view: How President Trump could focus on the doable
One good indication of the headwinds President Donald Trump’s new legal immigration plan will face is that he keeps unveiling it without actually spelling out its details. Trump announced it last week, but we still don’t know important facets of the proposal.
There are now nine categories of family relationships that can lead to the issuance of a visa for permanent legal residents, also known as a green card. Just which of these categories would be limited has not been spelled out.
One central detail we do know is that he proposes to increase the percentage of green cards given on the basis of jobs skills — from 12% to 57%. To keep the overall legal immigration approximately where it is, family-sponsored immigration would be cut, from 66% to 33%.
There’s a reason Trump left so much out of his proposal. The details he does fill in are sure to spark opposition. Once people learn that they will no longer be able get visas for, say, a sibling or parent, opposition to the plan will grow.
For decades, Congress has been a graveyard for bills to change legal immigration policy. In 2007, during a less polarized time, Congress debated a bill that included some of the shifts proposed by Trump. It failed.
Part of its death can be attributed to the fact that it was included in a massive measure with illegal immigration provisions. But opposition from immigrant voters to the portions dealing with legal immigration was strong.
Now along comes Trump with a plan that would go further than in 2007. And he is doing this at a time when he has alienated Democrats and immigrant voters with his detention, deportation and wall-building policies.
There is nothing wrong with a move to a more skilled legal immigrant pool. At a time when technological skills are in great demand, it makes sense. And Trump deserves credit for ignoring the calls of anti-immigration groups who want to cut legal immigration.
A better approach for Trump would be to focus on the doable.
There is an immediate deal to be made on legal immigration, which is to scrap the “diversity lottery,” a program begun in 1986 that accounts for about 5% of all green cards, to increase the number of skilled worker visas.
Beyond that, there could be some bipartisan interest in more modest cuts to family-based immigration, from 66% to somewhere not far above 50%. This could be done by eliminating several categories by which permanent legal residents may sponsor their family members, while retaining most, if not all, of the categories for U.S. citizens to sponsor their relatives.
Trump could grease the skids by including something Democrats want, such as providing relief for “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children and have since integrated themselves into their communities.
A more modest move in the direction of a skilled immigrant pool is an attainable goal. We'll see whether the president and Democrats see his proposal as the opening bid for genuine bipartisan compromise on immigration, or just another opportunity for gridlock.