Mediaboss Marketing

It may not be his intention, but President Trump is making the case for comprehensive immigration reform almost every time he opens his mouth.

His recent embrace of the immigration plan offered by U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia ignited a debate over a rock-bottom question: To whom should we open our doors and give access to Americas promise?

Trump made his position clear. Cut the number of visa seekers in half, down to about 500,000 from 1 million a year. In the process, drastically reduce the visas issued to family members of those already here.

Everybody elses eligibility would be based on a point system, from one point for a high school diploma, to 25 points for a Nobel Prize. Proficiency in English the greater the better is a door-opener, too.

The door swings widest for the well-off and better educated. A Ph.D. in math and science from a U.S. school earns 13 points toward the 30 points needed to apply. A $1.8 million investment in a business earns 12.

The Trump-backed plan does not favor the Statue of Libertys call to send us your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. On the contrary, it appears to aggressively reject those of less-privileged station. In so doing, it ignores our nations history and countless stories of immigrants whove achieved extraordinary success here, despite having no job or English-language skills when they arrived.

That said, the policy of family reunification the primary ticket to entry does deserve reconsideration. Trump and many others, including Jeb Bush, effectively argue the policy should better reflect workforce needs. Were inclined to agree, within reason.

It makes no sense for our country to grant visas mostly to family members, including distant relatives, in whats called chain immigration. But while todays family standards are too loose, the proposed remedy granting visas only to someones spouse and children is too tight.

Although the family issue deserves more examination, Trump is focused mostly on the policy of awarding H-1B visas to foreign tech workers, which he believes threatens the jobs of U.S. workers.

I will end forever the use of H-1B visas as a cheap labor program ... no exceptions, he said on the campaign trail.

However, those most in need of workers with H-1B skills the leaders of Silicon Valley say that without those skilled workers, the U.S. tech industry will suffer a blow.

Economists will tell you, too, that because of our nations low birth rate, we need more immigration to achieve the 3 percent economic growth targeted in the presidents budget.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, President Trumps Mar-a-Lago staff is getting ready for the winter tourist season. The pressing need is to to hire about 70 cooks, waiters and waitresses, maids and the like.

Trumps concern for American workers appears to be less impassioned when it comes to his own staffing needs. All 70 of the seasons hires will come from abroad, mostly Central Europe and Haiti, according to published reports.

Mar-a-Lago cant seem to find qualified Americans to do the work the resort demands.

The resort dutifully abides by the letter of the law, running two small print ads in the Palm Beach Post on un-consecutive days. If the ads generate no response for 14 days, Mar-a-Lago is cleared to bring in the foreigners.

Trump argues that qualified Americans reject offers of seasonal work. He has no choice, he says. Every hotel operator has the same problem, he says. American workers dont want these jobs, he says.

One side of Trumps mouth calls for protecting American jobs from foreign workers, the other hires foreign workers to do American jobs.

And the president does nothing to set an example. Surely some unemployed kitchen worker in West Palm Beach would welcome a job, if even for a short time. But he needs to know such a job exists. Two ads in a newspaper he may not read isnt likely to do the trick.

Perhaps participation in the kind of recent job fair Mar-a-Lago failed to attend also would stir up a few needy job seekers.

As we debate who we will welcome to America, we remain divided about what to do with the 11.3 million undocumented aliens living under the cloud of a deportation threat.

The jaundiced eye may question the real motive behind the rhetoric and the tweets.

Who are the undocumented 11 million targeted by the Trump Administrations get-tough deportation policy?

They are black and brown and poor and hoping for the life America has given dreamers since Plymouth Rock.

A reasoned debate about immigration is worth having and is long overdue. But its going to need a champion who can walk the talk.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary OHara, Elana Simms, Gary Stein and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O'Hara, Elana Simms, Gary Stein and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.

Read the original here:
Immigration reform needed, but Trump plan falls short - Sun Sentinel

August 16, 2017 By Staff / Baptist Standard

We lived in the Middle East as IMB missionaries for almost 30 years. During the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1991), many of our national friends came to the U.S. as refugees. Now there are millions more refugees from Syria and Iraq and many more people living in poverty in Central and South American who are desperate to come to the U.S. It should be obvious that we cannot accommodate all these people and millions more who want to fulfill their "American dream". As Christians we want to show love and compassion, but it has to be limited. We cannot throw our arms opened wide to the whole world. It would be much better for us to go to them and tell them about Jesus and teach them the Bible. Families ought to be kept together when possible, but when people come into the U.S. illegally, that is a privilege and not a right. Our system needs fixing but it cannot be unlimited no matter how compassionate we may be.

David King Marshall, Texas

See more here:
Letters: Immigration reform - Baptist Standard

Anjana Drukpa, a junior at Lincoln High School in Des Moines, Iowa, arrived in the U.S. from the mountains of Nepal when she was only 7 years old. She movedwith her two sisters and her single mother. She wanted us to come here to have a better life, better housing, for safety and education, so we can learn, pursue our career and then get a job, says Drukpa, who is one of 13 high school students recording their immigrant stories for a podcast project at Drake University, also in Des Moines. Were just working really hard to make our mom proud for what she has done for us.

Drukpas story and those of her classmates have become part of the U.S. experience generations of immigrants and refugees landing in a new country from far away to discover opportunity and a better life. Many of us have friends, co-workers and neighbors with similar tales of how they integrated into the U.S. culture and economy. These connections make the recently proposed RAISE Act more personal and provocative than your typical policy reform.

Our sister publication Knowledge@Wharton recently sat down with Kent Smetters, a Wharton professor of business economics and public policy, to talk about the impact of proposed immigration reforms on the U.S. economy. KWHS gleaned a few of the essentials from that interview and other sources to help you start thinking about how the RAISE Act would impact your lives and communities.

The current immigrant situation in the U.S. About 800,000 legal immigrants (we are not talking about undocumented immigrants here) come into the United States every year, a quarter of a percent of the U.S. population, which is 325 million and counting. About 45% of those immigrantsare college-educated, and the rest are typically very unskilled. The way to think about immigration in America is to adopt a barbell approach: We have a lot of people who are very unskilled, and a lot of people who are college-educated.

RAISE and its impact. RAISE stands for Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy. Reintroduced by U.S. Republican Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue in early August and endorsed by President Donald Trump, the RAISE Act seeks to raise the bar for skill sets but also aims to reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country by 50% over the next 10 years. It lowers the total amount of legal immigrants every year to roughly about 400,000. But it tries to change the skill mix such that instead of 45% of them being college-educated, it would be around 75%.

The motivation for these policy changes. According to its sponsors, the RAISE Act seeks to spur economic growth and raise American workers wages. For decades our immigration system has been completely divorced from the needs of our economy, and working Americans wages have suffered as a result. Our legislation will set things right, said Sen. Cotton in a statement.We will build an immigration system that raises working wages, creates jobs, and gives every American a fair shot at creating wealth, whether your family came over on the Mayflower or just took the oath of citizenship. Added Sen. Perdue: We want to welcome talented individuals from around the world who wish to come to the United States legally to work and make a better life for themselves. The RAISE Act will create a skills-based system that is more responsive to the needs of our economy and preserves the quality of jobs available to American workers.

A critical look at the numbers. Wharton research indicates that the RAISE Act could actually be a big negative for the nations gross domestic product (GDP) and employment. GDP is the most important economic indicator of the U.S. economy as well as economies around the world. GDP measures all goods and services that a country produces from cell phones and strawberries to the plumber who fixed your sink last week and it can be a kind of directional marker, giving clues about everything from your likelihood of getting a job, to the interest rateyou will pay on a car loan or other debt. It also tells economists when to start using the R word: A recession is often defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction in GDP. A steadily rising GDP typically means that the economy is humming, whereas a weak GDP means the economy is hurting.

What the heck is PWBM? PWBM is the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a simulator that helps analyze the potential impact of proposed policy changes. ThePWBM is non-partisan and worksat the intersection of business and policy to help policy makers, the public, and businesses make fact-based decisions. It is not meant to make policy recommendations. See the related links that accompany this article (in the toolbar to the right) to access the PWBM website.

What the numbers tell us. Smetters, who is faculty director of the PWBM, says the model tells us that between now and 2040 the proposed RAISE Act could shave two percentage points off GDP growth and cause a loss of more than four million jobs. However, in the short-term, reforms would have little negative impact on jobs and GDP, while wages would actually rise, although they would flatten out over time. Overall, the impact will be negative for both GDP and jobs. If there were no change in the number of visas issued, but all you did was to increase the skill mix, that would be positive for GDP, which would go up by about a third of one percent over time. But you will have a negative effect on GDP by reducing the total number of visas (those immigrants allowed into the country). The main points are that if you simply tilt the balance towards more skilled workers, thats a positive because skilled workers are going to be net producers for the economy, not just in terms of the taxes they pay but in terms of job creation. But if at the same time you reduce the total number of immigrants, the effect goes in the opposite direction.

Increasing immigration. Even if we didnt change the skill mix but we just increased the number of legal immigrants, it would have a very big positive impact on the economy. That is both in terms of total GDP and the number of jobs. Now, someone might say that this is obvious if you have more people. But it turns out that it even increases the amount of GDP per person, or how much money is available across everybody including native-born workers. The reason behind that is that immigrants tend to work pretty hard, and they tend to have a very high attachment rate to the labor force. They are less likely to be on unemployment insurance and things like that, and so they are really a net positive, even at a per-person level, not just at an overall level.

Playing with the PWBM. The Penn Wharton Budget Model is available online and free for use by the general public. You can go right to thePenn Wharton Budget Model website and play with the different simulators by just literally moving different dial controls to see what would happen, for example, to Social Security. There are many different options there of how we could fix Social Security, and you could move those dial controls accordingly. There are more than 4,096 combinations with Social Security alone. Because its a very deep model that does a lot of big data and a lot of complex theory, you dont have to wait a half-hour, or an hour for your results. We use cloud computing to pre-compute every single combination ahead of time so that you get instant results.

What is the RAISE Act and who does it affect?

Did you and your family immigrate to the U.S.? Share your story in the comment section of this article. How do you feel about the RAISE Act?

What is the Penn Wharton Budget Model and what does it tell us about the current proposals for immigration reform in the U.S.?

See original here:
Immigration Reform in America: The People, the Proposals and the Economics - Knowledge Wharton Highschool

Community Idea Stations

WCVE Forum: The Challenges of Immigration Reform Community Idea Stations While debate continues to swirl over the status of immigrants already in America and whether or not to build a wall, doesn't it make sense to start examining what our immigration process should look like going forward? In this presentation presented by ...

View original post here:
WCVE Forum: The Challenges of Immigration Reform - Community Idea Stations

Republican says he hasn't seen a manufacturing plant that can hire enough workers

Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson told the Rotary Club of Milwaukee that immigration reform is necessary for the U.S. to keep up with worker demand.

"As I've been on the job now as your U.S. Senator for the last 6.5 years, there's not one manufacturing plant that I've toured, that can hire enough people," Johnson said. "There's probably not one dairy farm that can find enough workers to milk their cows."

Johnson called for a common sense solution legal immigration reform.

"We need to recognize the reality of that situation," Johnson said. "We need a functioning, legal immigration system."

Johnson offered some guidelines for reform.

"It's gotta be based on facts. It's gotta be based on merit. It's gotta be based on compassion," he said. "All of those things, rolled together."

During the meeting, Johnson also suggested Illinois should help pay some of the cost for getting Taiwan-based manufacturer Foxconn to locate in Wisconsin and acknowledged the difficulties of getting the deal done.

"In the end, it's probably a risk worth taking," he said.

Read the original:
Wisconsin Sen. Johnson calls for immigration reform, addresses Foxconn hurdles - La Crosse's NewsTalk 1410AM 92.3FM