Posted on 08/03/2017 7:27:21 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
President Donald Trump announced his support for a legislation that would cut in half the number legal immigrants allowed into the US while moving to a "merit-based" system favouring English-speaking skilled workers for residency cards.
If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the legislation titled the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act could benefit highly-educated and technology professionals+ from countries like India.
The RAISE Act would scrap the current lottery system to get into the US and instead institute a points-based system for earning a green card. Factors that would be taken into account include English language skills, education, high- paying job offers and age.
"The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It will do this by changing the way the US issues Green Cards to nationals from other countries. Green Cards provide permanent residency, work authorisation, and fast track to citizenship," Trump said at a White House event to announce his support to the RAISE Act.
Standing along with two top authors of the bill — Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue+ - Trump said the RAISE Act ends chain migration, and replaces the low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a Green Card.
This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy, he said, adding that the RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare, and protects US workers from being displaced.
"That's a very big thing. They're not going to come in and just immediately go and collect welfare. That doesn't happen under the RAISE Act. They can't do that. Crucially, the Green Card reforms in the RAISE Act will give American workers a pay raise by reducing unskilled immigration," he said.
Trump said this legislation will not only restore America's competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens.
"This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first," he said.
Noting that the current over a half-century old system is "an obsolete disaster", Senator Cotton said that it is time for it to change.
"First, we bring over a million immigrants into this country a year. That's like adding the population of Montana every single year; adding the population of Arkansas every three years. The vast majority of those workers -- or those immigrants come here not because of their English-language abilities or their job skills, or their job offer, or their educational attainment," he said.
In fact, only one in 15 out of a million new immigrants come here because of their job skills and their ability to succeed in this economy, Cotton said.
The RAISE Act will be re-orienting Green Card system towards people who can speak English, who have high degrees of educational attainment, who have a job offer that pays more, and a typical job in their local economy, who are going to create a new business, and who are outstanding in their field around the world, he added.
Senator Perdue said the current system does not work. "It keeps America from being competitive, and it does not meet the needs of the economy today," he said.
"Today we bring in 1.1 million legal immigrants a year. Over 50 per cent of our households of legal immigrants today participate in our social welfare system. Right now, only one 1 out of 15 immigrants who come into our country come in with skills that are employable. We've got to change that," he said.
Perdue said he looked at the at best practices. "We looked at countries like Canada, Australia, and others. What we're introducing today is modeled on the current Canadian and Australian systems. It's pro-worker, it's pro-growth, and it's been proven to work. Both have been extremely successful in attracting highly skilled workers to those countries," the Senator said.
"We can all agree that the goals of our nation's immigration system should be to protect the interests of working Americans, including immigrants, and to welcome talented individuals who come here legally and want to work and make a better life for themselves. Our current system makes it virtually impossible for them to do that," said the Senator.
According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the higher entry standards established in this proposal will allow authorities to do a more thorough job reviewing applicants for entry, therefore protecting the security of the US homeland.
The additional time spent on vetting each application as a result of this legislation will also ensure that each application serves the national interest, he observed.
"The American people deserve a lawful immigration system that promotes our national interest. The RAISE Act would give us a more merit-based immigration system that admits the best and the brightest around the world while making it harder for people to come here illegally," Sessions said.
"The bill would end programme known to be rife with fraud and abuse and finally improve the vetting process, making our country and working class wages much safer and stronger," said the Attorney General.
One would hope
Oh, those Indians may benefit. That’s true.
merit based = race and color blind.
people are so indoctrinated into the PC hive mind that they can’t cope with the elegant, simple truth of a meritocracy.
If this is another back door H-1B visa program then I am against it.
We have enough home grown STEM graduates. We don’t need any more stinking H-1B scabs.
They wouldn’t be H1-Bs under this set-up, they’d be green card holders on the path to citizenship, like your grandparents, I presume.
Doesn't alter the fact that wages for STEM grads has been flat for decades. WE HAVE ENOUGH.
Doesn’t alter the fact that wages for STEM grads has been flat for decades. WE HAVE ENOUGH.
I am all in favor of a merit based system. This is a great improvement over the current system.
I would like to see legal immigration stopped for 10 years. I would like to see ‘anchor’ immigration stopped forever.
The only legal immigration should be for unattached females 16-28 years old weighing less than 140 pounds and being at least an 8 on the standard hotness scale.
But wait, this is in English! Someone alert Acosta!
I’ve joked about such things in the past, but found it more fun to visit other countries.
Seriously though, I would like to see a sex balance on whatever we decide we will allow in terms of immigration. It would not be good for our country to import India’s or China’s sex imbalance. I don’t want us becoming the relief valve for too many girls killed in the womb in China and India.
PING
Outstanding tech people are always in short supply
Our universities do graduate a large number of STEM students, but a huge fraction(especially at the graduate level) are not American citizens.
We need to keep those grads here in the US
“President Donald Trump announced his support for a legislation that would cut in half the number legal immigrants allowed into the US while moving to a “merit-based” system favouring English-speaking skilled workers for residency cards.”
This one I don’t agree with for two reasons.
First of all, the libs under Obama allowed and prioritized over 85,000 immigrants for entry into the US and positions along and their families using the H1B VISA approval system last year alone based upon computer knowledge only.
We already have an existing unemployment problem in the US that can only get worse as the promising jobs will be handed to immigrants without any competition with the locals. The feds cannot afford to train them then not have jobs for them.
Secondly, this will not effect the hordes of people illegally crossing our borders now. In 2016, according to ICE, over one million illegals crossed the borders of which only a little over four hundred thousand were caught. There goes the job market again along with wasted money to feed, house, cover kids education, roads, free medical capacity, and many other perks that will still exist along with using taxpayer money to train our competition.
rwood
(especially at the graduate level) are not American citizens.
I suspect that a number of foreign students apply to grad school because it is the only way they can stay in US—because there are limits for the number of H-1B visas that can be issued.
However, there are no limits on numbers for foreign students visas, so colleges such as U of Illinois (one of the best) are heavily recruiting Chinese students—actually going over to China to do so. Why, The Chinese pay full ride versus in-state tuition. IL students are shut out from STEM even though their parents are paying IL taxes to support the public colleges. Close to a quarter of STEM seats were going to foreign students a few years ago, but I believe the number has been reduced due to IL residents’ outcries.
Like in the tech sector, I believe that the foreign grad students bring down the grad stipends for assistantships that allow students to attend as well as take seats from potential US students.
We don’t need to keep foreign grads here nearly as much as we need to be turning out more US citizen grads IMHO. Why? Because these foreign workers will work for less in order to stay here.
If there were to be empty grad engineering seats due to reduced numbers of foreign students visas, there are 2 solutions:
1. Schools have to re-evaluate their programs—they expand, they can contract.
2. High School and Undergraduate STEM education needs to be re-evaluated. US educated students need to be competitive.
I have been following this issue for years...My family is all STEM—PhD ChemE, MS+ EE/CompE, BS+ medical micro-bio, PhD Plant Genetics/Ag science, so I do have a very strong bias against unlimited student visas and increasing H-1B Visas.
Unfortunately our public mis-education system does not produce enough STEMs. I've worked beside many natural born citizen IT college graduates who cannot understand or do 8th grade math. For example they don't understand the difference between the numerator and denominator in calculating a percentage. They have no concept of logic in cause and effect in software.
My question about RAISE which is based on the Canadian system is this:
Do those who studied the Canadian system realize that the reason it works is that many of the legal immigrants to Canada are working illegally in the US? I've worked beside many of them.
Fixed it.
Wages for STEM grads is flat or falling. Cut off the slave supply and wages will go up, and the incentive to go not STEM will also go up. I believe in the free market, do you?
There are non-white foreigners who speak English?
Next will be the claim that American non-whites have photo-Ids
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.