Trump, GOP senators introduce bill to slash legal immigration levels
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President Trump on Wednesday endorsed a new bill in the Senate aimed at slashing legal immigration levels over a decade, a goal Trump endorsed on the campaign trail that would represent a profound change to U.S. immigration policies that have been in place for half a century.
Trump appeared with Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.) at the White House to unveil a modified version of a bill the senators first introduced in April to cut immigration by half from the current level of more than 1 million foreigners each year who receive green cards granting them permanent legal residence in the United States.
The outlines of the legislation reflect the aims Trump touted on the campaign trail, when he argued that the rapid growth of legal immigration levels over five decades had harmed job opportunities for American workers.
“This would be the most significant reform to the immigration system in half a century,” said Trump, flanked by the senators in the Roosevelt Room. “It is a historic and very vital proposal.”
The legislation would mark a major shift in U.S. immigration laws, which over the past half century have permitted a growing number of immigrants to come to the country to work or join relatives already living here legally. Though the bill faces dim prospects in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority, the president’s event came as the White House sought to move past a major political defeat on repealing the Affordable Care Act by pivoting to issues that resonate with Trump’s core supporters.
Trump had met twice previously at the White House with Cotton and Perdue to discuss the details of their legislation, which is titled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act.
The new proposal calls for drastic cuts to family-based immigration programs that allow siblings and grown children of U.S. citizens and legal residents to apply for green cards. (Minor children and spouses would still be able to apply.) A point system based on factors such as English ability, education levels and job skills would be created to rank applicants for the 140,000 employment-based green cards distributed annually.
In addition, the senators also propose to cap refugee levels at 50,000 per year and to end a visa diversity lottery that has awarded 50,000 green cards a year, mostly to areas in the world that traditionally do not have as many immigrants to the United States, including Africa.
Cotton said that while immigrant rights groups might view the current system as a “symbol of America’s virtue and generosity,” he sees it “as a symbol we’re not committed to working-class Americans and we need to change that.”
Opponents of slashing immigration levels said immigrants help boost the economy and that studies have shown they commit crimes at lower levels than do native-born Americans.
“This is just a fundamental restructuring of our immigration system which has huge implications for the future,” said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy for the Center for Migration Studies. “This is part of a broader strategy by this administration to rid the country of low-skilled immigrants they don’t favor in favor of immigrants in their image.”
Other critics said the Raise Act, which maintains the annual cap for employment-based green cards at the current level of 140,000, would not increase skilled immigration and could make it more difficult for employers to hire the workers they need. Perdue and Cotton said their proposal is modeled after “merit-based” immigration programs in Canada and Australia that also use point systems, but those countries admit more than twice the number of immigrants to their countries as the United States does currently when judged as a percentage of their overall population levels.
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