Posted on 03/01/2017 9:35:55 AM PST by COUNTrecount
President Donald Trump called for a huge overhaul of the nation’s immigration rules to reduce the huge inflow of low-skill, welfare-dependent immigrants, but perhaps also to increase the inflow of productivity-boosting white-collar immigrants.
In his Feb. 28 speech to the joint session of Congress, he declared:
Nations around the world, like Canada, Australia and many others –- have a merit-based immigration system. It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially. Yet, in America, we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens rely upon. According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs America’s taxpayers many billions of dollars a year.
Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits: it will save countless dollars, raise workers’ wages, and help struggling families –- including immigrant families –- enter the middle class.
I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws.
Trump’s proposed shift to “a merit-based immigration system” would reduce the inflow of unskilled migrants, but perhaps also raise the inflow of skilled migrants.
Two GOP Senators are also proposing a reduction in low-skill immigration and a rise in high-skilled immigration.
Any policy shift to reduce l0w-skilled migration would likely be opposed by Democrats, by Wall Street investors and by the many member companies in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all of whom gain from the huge annual inflow of roughly 800,000 salary-cutting, welfare-spending unskilled migrants.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Being here illegally is a criminal act.
The crawler on the Fox News site said Trump took a “Hardline view” on immigration in his speech. How is enforcing the law “hardline”?
Whatever the rules turn out to be, somebody will try to find a way to abuse it. H1B is an example.
“productivity-boosting white-collar immigrants”
This is not what Trump said. The author is equating “skilled” with “white collar”.
“Skilled” can mean machinists, welders, refinery operators, steel mill workers, etc. None of which are “white collar” and yet people we actually will have a shortage of if we embark on the kind of re-industrialization of America and rebuilding of American infrastructure we need.
“as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans”
H1B visas are not for immigrants. I hired many actual immigrants when I was an IT manager. I refused to consider any visa workers. The immigrants did not come at any sort of discounted wages the way H1B captive indentured servants do.
Visa workers should be limited to a few thousand for absolutely top people in research universities, not the 80,000+ per year H1Bs who are really substandard workers whose only value is their indentured status.
Why didn’t you hire Americans?
We have enough Americans to fill these jobs. Wages will go up making more people enter the work force. Your statement is poppy cock. The whole point of re industrialization is to put AMERICANS back to work. Sheesh.
If it were being run honestly. Obviously that has not been the case, since companies like Disney brought in H1B visa workers to replace Americans who were already doing the job.
Shutting down the H1B visa program must be accompanied by other moves to prevent simply offshoring the work. Tech export restrictions, taxes equal to the difference in prevailing wages, etc.
It does seem that Democrats embrace the concept of second class citizens, doesn’t it ? People living at the bottom are much easier to buy with promises of “assistance” and scare with threats Republicans will take it away.
Even easier: Make the H1B visa fee $200K/yr. See how bad the shortage of American STEM workers really is by seeing how many visas are requested when foreigners cost at least $200K each.
So Engineers and scientists (STEM) plus IT workers will continue to get the shaft.
Old people, that have never contributed to SS come in and are given SSI. They are also a drag on our health system as eighty per cent of a person health care expense is spent in the last six months of their lives.
Hopefully, part of the merit based immigration is learning English and becoming a U. S. citizen.
I did. They were American citizens. They were the best qualified applicants headhunters sent me when the jobs opened up. If you mean why didn’t I hire native-born American citizens, I did for about 3/4 of my hires. I just didn’t discriminate against immigrants who had become citizens and were the best candidate at the time.
There are thousands of jobs waiting at good wages for machinists and welders, and they can’t find qualified people. They are not hiring visa workers, the jobs are just sitting there unfilled.
If they offered $100.00 per hour would they find people to fill those jobs?
Read Mike Rowe. On Tucker Carlson tonight he claimed 75% of 5.6 million currently open positions in America are unfilled, skilled jobs requiring no college degree. Not $100/hr, but $40/hr ? Yes. They are unfilled because American school kids have been told skilled labor is beneath them — it isn’t “cool” — by high school guidance counselors. They would rather work in an office cubicle for $15/hr in a “white collar” customer service job or at Starbucks and complain that there are no good jobs out there for their “degree”.
These are not my own theories, but I’ve seen this guy and others like Ratzenberger saying this in interviews on FOX for years. This is what he has testified to the Senate and met with the Secretary of Education about — several times since 2001. He has been complaining that vocational classes were removed from high schools and kids unsuited for college are all being pushed to college while millions of skilled jobs go unfilled.
As a mfg business owner, I’ve been saying this for 30 years.kids have been discouraged from mfg work by the schools and popular culture. Add this to the competion from off shoring ,and you got a mess. It’s a shame really.
It really is a national tragedy. Even 35 years ago when I was in HS, and we still had metal shop and auto shop, it seemed pretty pro-forma rather than a serious attempt at career prep. They were elective classes filled with people avoiding “real classes” and the teachers were fine with that. They looked at a college-bound honor student like me and couldn’t figure out why I was wasting their time.
I wonder if DeVos has any interest in changing that attitude, bringing back vocational classes as serious subjects, possibly even REQUIRED classes graded as tough as any other class. Educating kids on the wages available and the pride of actually building something from nothing every day.
Hope the issue of Chinese tourist anchor babies and anchor babies of other illegals can be dealt with in the future as well as the abuse of the H-1B and other student and worker visa programs!!!
~~Freeper formerly known as bushwon ;)
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