US ‘Needs More Low-Skilled Immigrants — NY Times

And let’s do it by making it more hard for aspiring immigrants to join family members in the United States and ratcheting down the arbitrary and unworkable caps on employment-based visas.

Immigration reform was a mainstay of President Trump’s campaign, and it continues to fire up much of his base. Democrats say they fear how Mr. Trump would employ stricter selection criteria. Blaming immigrants for stealing jobs and depressing wages is just one more way Trump draws attention away from his own lack of leadership.

The crux of the bill, sponsored by Republican Sens. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is co-sponsoring legislation with Cotton that the president enthusiastically endorsed. By my estimate, as many as 1.5 million skilled workers and their families are waiting for green cards in the United States today, but we admit only 120,000 workers every year in the top three employment-based categories of permanent-resident visas.

If you are against illegal immigration, it strikes us that you should be for legal immigration. “Our people, our citizens, and our workers”, he went on, have struggled while “competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals”.

In the first six months of the Trump administration there has been a spike in the number of immigrants arrested by federal agents in Chicago and ordered out of the country, the I-Team has learned. Immigrants and their children make up almost 30 percent of USA entrepreneurs although they account for only 14 percent of the population. Some activists said Mr. Trump was embracing a “white nationalist” agenda by supporting the immigration bill. This would be devastating to both our families and the economy, the very antithesis of America. “This is identity politics at its worst”.

The group also pointed to past studies that have found that in 2010, one in 10 Americans in the private sector were employed by an immigrant-owned business, that immigrants are twice as likely as US -born Americans to start their own business and that immigrants own more than one-quarter of Main Street businesses in the USA, including over half of grocery stores and one-third of restaurants.

“Was Barbara Jordan a white nationalist?” The proposal would keep families apart and close the doors of opportunity to people who come to the United States to work their way up and provide a better future for their families. Cotton and Perdue’s bill would drastically reduce the type of relatives that can be sponsored to just spouses and minor children instead of extended family members.

Employment-based green cards would be changed with a point system to select immigrants.

“This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy”, said Trump.

About 140,000 such permits, the NYT reported, are issued based on job skills.

The new system would retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of US citizens and legal permanent residents, but not for most extended and adult family members.

Questioning legal immigration hasn’t been an exclusively conservative position, however. New immigrants to the US are indeed better educated than they used to be. Hillary Clinton, current Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and his chief lieutenant Sen.

Fourth, the bill eliminates the Diversity Visa program, dubbed the green-card lottery.

Our current immigration system achieves none of these goals.

Still, as Mr. Krikorian pointed out, the proposed legislation establishes a new framework for the immigration debate, a framework of fewer immigrants. The RAISE Act would change that by creating a point-based merit system that considers things like English proficiency, education level and earning potential.

And for those hoping to stem illegal immigration, this plan only increases the need and temptation for illegal immigration.

But draconian curbs on legal immigration should not be.

Trump’s approval rating among Trump voters and Republicans has also dropped.