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The RAISE Act will reduce poverty, increase wages and save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars, Trump told reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first, and that puts America first.

The current immigration system, said Trump:

has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources, and among those hit the hardest are minority workers competing for jobs againstbrand new arrivals. It has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers [this RAISE act] will give Americans a payraise by reducing immigration [and] it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens.

Democrats and their ethnic pressure groups are expected to oppose the immigration reformbecause they wish to increase the inflow of unskilled foreign migrants. Business groups also oppose the measure because it would raise wages and reduce the inflow of new welfare-aided consumers.

However, manypolls show strong public support for cutting the annual inflow of immigrants and temporary blue-collar and white-collar foreign workers. That foreign inflow now adds up to almost 4 million people per year. The inflow has a huge economic impact on the 150 million Americans in the workforce, but especially on the 4 million young Americans who join the workforce each year.

The bill was drafted and is being pushed by Georgia Sen. David Perdue and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. It is formally titled theReforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act.

The nations immigration system should helpAmerican workers to achievea pay raise and have a higher standard of living, he said. The new RAISE act would raise economic growth and help America get more competitive, said Cotton. Our current system simply doesnt do that it puts great downward pressure on peoplewho work with their hands and on their feet it is a symbol that we are not committed to working-class Americans.

Each year, only one-in-15 of the 1 million green card immigrants is accepted because of their ability to grow the economy, said Cotton.

Itis imperative that our immigrationsystem focuses on high skilled workers who can add value to our economy and ultimately achieve their own version of the American dream, said Perdue.

To help the bill survive opposition from media and business groups, the bill focuses only on green card legal immigration. It does not raise or lower the number of green card workers, such as H-1Bs, or constrict the annual award of work permits, dubbed Employment Authorization Documents.

Each year, the federal government provides green cards to roughly 1 million people. It also provides work visas to roughly 500,000 foreign workers, such as H-2Bs and H-1Bs, and it provides work permits to roughly 2 million people, including refugees and foreign graduates of U.S. colleges.

But if the RAISE act becomes law, Democrats and their business allies would lose the huge annual inflow of immigrants whom they expect will soon bring them national political dominance. That loss will pressure Democrats to compete for votes from working-class Americans by offering to slash the very unpopular inflow of visa-workers.

The proposed immigration reform was applauded by pro-American reformers. Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA said:

The RAISE Act introduced today by Senators Cotton and Perdue will do more than any other action to fulfill President Trumps promises as a candidate to create an immigration system that puts the interests of American workers first.

Our recent polling confirms that American voters overwhelmingly want far less immigration because they know mass immigration creates unfair competition for American workers.

Seeing the President standing with the bills sponsors at the White House gives hope to the tens of millions of struggling Americans in stagnant jobs or outside the labor market altogether. NumbersUSA stands with these Americans in wholeheartedly endorsing the RAISE Act.

According to a statement from Perdue, the RAISE Act would:

Establish a Skills-Based Points System.The RAISE Act would replace the current permanent employment-visa system with a skills-based points system, akin to the systems used by Canada and Australia. The system would prioritize those immigrants who are best positioned to succeed in the United States and expand the economy. Applicants earn points based on education, English-language ability, high-paying job offers, age, record of extraordinary achievement, and entrepreneurial initiative.

Prioritize Immediate Family Households.The RAISE Act would retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents while eliminating preferences for certain categories of extended and adult family members.

Eliminate the Outdated Diversity Visa Lottery.The Diversity Lottery is plagued with fraud, advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and does not even promote diversity. The RAISE Act would eliminate the 50,000 visas arbitrarily allocated to this lottery.

Place a Responsible Limit on Permanent Residency for Refugees.The RAISE Act would limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average.

Clickhereto read the full text of the legislation. Additionally, clickherefor a section by section summary andherefor a fact sheet on the legislation.

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Donald Trump Unveils Merit Based Immigration Reform ...

State legislatures across the country have enacted a wave of immigration-related measures in the seven months since President Trump took office.

With Washington paralyzed on broader immigration reforms, lawmakers have taken matters into their own hands, implementing new measures either encouraging support for immigrants or cracking down on those who enter the country illegally.

Youre seeing legislation that comes up because the feds havent fixed the issue, so states are trying to find ways around that, said Mo Denis, a Democratic state senator from Nevada.

Lawmakers in 42 states and the District of Columbia passed a total of 133 new measures this year governing some part of their states relationship with immigrants, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures Immigrant Policy Project.

Thats almost twice as many measures as legislatures passed in 2016.

Thirty-six states have considered laws related to sanctuary cities, those localities that refuse to comply with federal requests that undocumented immigrants be held for deportation.

Four states Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi and Texas have enacted bans against sanctuary jurisdictions. The Georgia law applies only to state universities and colleges, while the Indiana, Mississippi and Texas laws prohibit cities within their borders from refusing federal detainer requests.

The number of states with such laws is likely to grow in the coming years, especially as the federal Justice Department attempts to withhold grant money from cities or counties that refuse federal detainer requests.

Maryland went the other direction: The state legislature allocated money that would make up for any federal grants lost over a jurisdictions refusal to comply with detainer requests.

California legislators are considering a measure that would in effect make the entire state a sanctuary for undocumented immigrations. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said on NBCs Meet the Press he wanted to see some changes to the measure, sponsored by state Senate President Kevin de Leon (D), before it reaches his desk.

The states that were committed to sanctuary policies and non-cooperation in immigration enforcement kind of doubled down, said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which backs strict enforcement policies. States certainly do not have the authority to undermine federal immigration enforcement. The law says they may assist in federal immigration enforcement.

Trumps move to crack down on refugees in the United States has also drawn a response from state legislatures.

Several states have changed the way they handle refugees being resettled within their borders. Colorado legislators added new money for a resettlement program, and South Dakota legislators repealed a state law that gave the Department of Social Services the ability to work with federal officials to resettle refugees.

Four other states California, Illinois, Nebraska and New Jersey passed resolutions supportive of refugees or opposing Trumps efforts to block resettlement of refugees from Muslim-majority nations.

Once refugees are in the United States, states cannot take steps to block them from traveling to or resettling in their jurisdictions.

The debate over immigration has spilled into education policy as well.

Washington, D.C., joined 16 states in offering in-state tuition to its residents, regardless of their immigration status. Missouri lawmakers went the other way, banning funds to public institutions that offer discounts to those in the country illegally.

Six states took steps to make sure their graduating high school seniors can pass the same civics test given to immigrants as they apply for citizenship. Those states Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada and West Virginia will recommend or require students to pass the Citizenship and Naturalization Service exam before graduating from high school.

Observers say the rush of new immigration legislation has been spurred by Trumps election.

Trump kicked off his campaign pledging to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico. And while construction on the wall has not begun, a number of elected officials took Trumps pledge to heart, either by pushing their own enforcement measures or by taking steps to push back against the administration.

All the rhetoric that was out there and what people were saying, I think there were people who ran for office saying they were going to do this, and theyve been emboldened by the administration, Denis said. Where you see that the most is right after the election.

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Trump spurs wave of state immigration laws - The Hill

Last week, when Donald Trump publicly endorsed the RAISE Act, a bill that would drastically curb legal immigration to the United States, he did what immigration hard-liners had waited more than two decades for a President to do. The bill, whose acronym is short for Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, was introduced in February by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, both Republicans, but it hadnt attracted much attention until Trump took up its mantle. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first, Trump said at a White House press conference. Our people, our citizens, and our workers, he went on, have struggled while competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals.

While Trump made combating illegal immigration a cornerstone of his Presidential campaign, he also pledged to limit legal immigration. Its this side of the issue thats addressed in the RAISE Act. If it becomes law, it would cut the number of legal permanent residents allowed into the country each year from a million to five hundred thousand, mainly by limiting the number of foreign family members that current residents are allowed to sponsor. Family unity has been one of the core principles of the U.S.s immigration system since the nineteen-sixtiesanyone with citizenship or a green card is allowed to sponsor family membersbut the RAISE Act would cap the number of green cards allocated to family sponsors, and eliminate family sponsorship beyond spouses and minor children. The bill would also implement a point system that would rank applicants seeking to come to the U.S. for workabout a hundred and fifty thousand such people come to the U.S. every yearand give an advantage to immigrants who already speak English.

Proposals to cut legal immigration arent exactly new in Washington. When comprehensive immigration-reform bills were debated in 2006, 2007, and 2013, conservative lawmakers briefly and unsuccessfully pushed to include similar measures. But the last time a plan to cut legal immigration received the kind of attention currently enjoyed by the RAISE Act was 1996. Then, as now, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. Lamar Smith, a congressman from Texas, was the primary force behind a set of sweeping reforms to both legal and illegal immigration. But his effort to cut legal immigration failed: a majority of Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, and a third of House Republicans voted against it. Congress then passed an elaborate system of penalties and enforcement measures for illegal immigration that became the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. That bill, which was signed by President Bill Clinton, laid the groundwork for the system of mass deportation thats in effect today.

Questioning legal immigration hasnt been an exclusively conservative position, however. Today the Democratic Party is seen as being completely in the pro-immigration column, and the Republican Party as being in the anti-immigrant column, Muzaffar Chishti, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, told me. But it wasnt always that way. In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, Democrats, channelling the concerns of organized labor, considered low-skilled immigrants a threat to wages and jobs. Their rhetoric then sounded like Trumps last week. But as Democrats began to feel that their political future depended on a growing population of Hispanic voters, their message changed. The early two-thousands were littered with mea culpas and about-faces from prominent Democrats who, just years before, had taken strong stances against immigration. In 2006, for example, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, who in 1993 introduced a bill to eliminate birthright citizenship, issued a dramatic apology on the Senate floor. Then, in 2010, he excoriated Republicans for advancing a birthright citizenship measure of their own.

And while mainstream members of the Republican Party were once more aligned with pro-business conservatives, who were sanguine about the economic advantages of immigrant workers, a more strident wingepitomized by Smith and Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate to become the Attorney Generalbegan pushing a more general anti-immigrant line that, decades later, has won out in the Trump Administration. Now that the Administration has increased immigration enforcement, its turning to legal immigration, Chishti told me. This is completely out of the Sessions playbook. It did not begin with Trump. This playbook is literal: in 2015, Sessions and his staff produced a twenty-three-page document called Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority. It anatomized how the federal government was failing to enforce immigration laws, and how immigration was causing wages to stagnate and unemployment to persist. Many of these ideas were included in the Republican Partys platform last year, which, for the first time in the Partys history, called for an explicit reduction in legal immigration. For anti-immigration stalwarts, it was Sessionss involvement in Trumps campaign that won their support. Sessions was Trumps Good Housekeeping seal of approval, Mark Krikorian, the head of the influential anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies, told me. Sure, Trump is not a real conservative and hes a little bit unusual, but hes got Sessions.

Its unlikely that the RAISE Act will become laweven today, many Republicans in Congress would likely vote against it. (Some, like Lindsey Graham, have already publicly criticized it.) But in Trump, nativist activists and lawmakers finally have someone in the White House who speaks their language. For the first time ever, a President has sought a reduction in legal immigration, Chishti told me. Even when Congress has been hostile to immigration, the President has always stood on the other side of the issue. This is from Wilson to Truman; it was true of Kennedy and Johnson and Reagan, all the way to George W. Bush and Obama. There have been no exceptionsuntil now.

Read this article:
The Decades-Long Campaign to Cut Legal Immigration - The New Yorker

BOURBONNAIS, Ill. On the day that Jay Cutler arrived in Miami to come out of retirement for the proverbial one last job like in the movies, there were three Chicago Bears quarterbacks struggling to handle what had been Cutlers old job.

Nothing too alarming, mind you, and there were some good moments, too, in Mondays practice. Plus, theres the matter of the anticlimax: Mike Glennon is going to be the Bears starter to start the season; the only real question at this point is whether Mark Sanchez can hold his spot as the backup, ahead of No. 2 overall pick Mitchell Trubisky.

But the Cutler news added a little intrigue and texture to the Bears current QB hierarchy after the team let him go in the offseason, following season-ending shoulder surgery and his own struggles during the teams 3-13 campaign that leaves many of the holdovers in the hot seat heading into this season.

Head coach John Fox, though, said hes happy for Cutler, his starter for two seasons in Chicago. Fox said he texted the new Dolphins quarterback well wishes after hearing the news that he was forgoing a broadcasting career with FOX to help the suddenly needy Dolphins, who have lost Ryan Tannehill indefinitely.

I think its great, Fox said. I am happy for him. Its another opportunity, and its all guys can ask for. We wish him nothing but the best.

Fox added that Cutlers familiarity of the Dolphins scheme, which head coach Adam Gase is keeping much of after coaching Cutler with the Bears in 2015, should be a big benefit to making the transition more seamless.

Therell be some carryover for sure, Fox said. Hes a sharp guy.

The Bears decided to move on in the offseason, given the financial flexibility of doing so, as well as the injury. But there also had not been enough progress at the position for the franchises liking, so thats why Glennon was signed to be the starter now, Trubisky drafted to be the future and Sanchez added to buttress the two.

I was happy with [Cutler] both years, Fox said. I dont think I would say I was happy with our seasons [6-10 and 3-13 records]. He was a smart, tough guy that worked hard. When we departed, we wish it went a different way. I am sure he feels the same way.

On Monday, Sanchez save for one horrible decision on a would-be pick-6 might have been the most effective of the three new quarterbacks. Glennon was fine, getting the offense back on track after a slow first period of practice, and showing some nice touch in the red zone. His intangibles have stood out the most to many observers, but the deep ball remains a work in progress when he's running the offense.

Some of Trubiskys best moments in camp have been when hes been able to unleash his golden arm, lacing some pretty throws. But on Monday, he appeared a bit skittish on a few reps, with inconsistent footwork and accuracy on his throws.

Glennon said hes likely to keep an eye on Cutler as a fan and given that many of Cutlers former teammates, he said, have been talking about his return to the league since the news broke.

Maybe Ill follow it more closely, Glennon said. It seems like a good opportunity for him. I know its a big story here in Chicago, but its no different for me.

But for Bears fans? Given that Cutler was such a divisive figure for more than eight years in the city, its very possible that theyll be keeping closer tabs really on Cutler more than they are on Glennon. After all, Glennon is more of a caretaker or placeholder until Trubisky is deemed ready, whenever that might be. Cutler suddenly has become one of the early stories of the 2017 season. The production, effectiveness and statistics of Glennon and Cutler surely will be put side by side more than once in the coming months.

Glennon doesnt appear too concerned. He has a job to do, and his first preseason game his first real audition as Bears starter comes Thursday at home in the opener against the Denver Broncos.

Itll be my first time playing with this offense [in a real-game situation], and the first time for a few guys, Glennon said. I just want to go out, do a good job of moving the ball, scoring some points and just executing our offense.

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The Case For Merit-Based Immigration Reform - Kokomo Perspective

Conservative efforts at health-care reform are, for the moment, a shambles. Conservative efforts at tax reform are foundering as well, though their prospects may be sunnier, given the habitual Republican appetite for tax cuts of almost any description, including irresponsible ones.

Both the tax-reform project and the health-care project have run into trouble because of a lack of intellectual and political leadership: Washingtons sock drawers are stuffed full of conservative proposals to rationalize taxes and to nudge health care in a more market-oriented direction, but herding those congressional cats and conservative activists, think-tankers, PACs and super PACs, aspiring presidents, etc. in the same direction requires real political leadership. That is made difficult by the fact that the loudest conservative voices the talking mouths of cable news and the talk-radio ranters have a very heavy financial incentive to be dissatisfied, or at least to pronounce themselves dissatisfied, with whatever it is that Republican congressional leaders decide to support, while the president himself, who has decided that railing against Congress will be his substitute for leading them in his direction, has similar incentives.

If these two issues are any indicator, then the Trump administrations keystone issue immigration reform is on a course to end up wrecked upon the same rocky shoals.

Can that be prevented?

The Republican party is at odds with itself over what it actually wants out of an immigration policy. One the one hand, libertarian-leading Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce crowd think that the case for free trade is also the case, more or less, for free immigration, that the free flow of goods and capital across borders ought to be complemented by the free flow of labor. The open borders Republican is mainly a straw man deployed by the talk-radio gang: Advocates of a genuine open-borders policy of the sort that Great Britain maintained in the 19th century, when immigrants could show up in London without so much as proof of identity (much less a visa), are scarce. But there are a fair number of Republicans who prefer relatively high levels of immigration, including relatively high numbers of low-skilled immigrant workers from Latin America.

Opposing them are more restrictionist populist-nationalist Republicans, some of them in the Trump mold and some of them intelligent and responsible. These include those who see the world the way my colleague Mark Krikorian does, believing that current levels of immigration are bad for domestic workers, especially low-wage workers, and that recent immigrants have placed undue burdens on domestic institutions, especially the social-welfare and criminal-justice systems. They want lower immigration across the board, not only a crackdown on illegal immigration but also a significant reduction in legal immigration.

Can these differences be resolved in such a way as to allow the emergence of a unified Republicans approach to immigration?

Yes. And not only that: Democrats can be brought on board, too.

Democrats, in reaction to Trump, are at the moment moving rhetorically in a more liberal direction on immigration. But that is not where the Democratic base is right now, especially in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. At Bernie Sanders rallies I attended in Iowa during the primaries, union-hall Democrats offered up many an earful about the need for immigration control, and Senator Sanders himself denounced the Republican view of immigration as an open borders scheme hatched by right-wing billionaires looking to undermine the economic position of the American working class. Many of those voters no doubt cross the aisle for Donald Trump in places such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Democrats cannot afford to lose those voters permanently, and they know as much.

So, where to begin?

Begin by cordoning off the issue of illegal immigration.

With the exception of a few oddballs and ideologues, we can all agree that whatever our national immigration policy ends up being, it must be conducted in an orderly and lawful fashion. That means that getting control of illegal immigration needs to be the first order of business. Happily, that is something we can do without waiting years or decades to build new walls that will, in the end, address the problem only partially. (Most illegals do not wade across the Rio Grande; they enter legally on visas and then violate them.) Through workplace enforcement (mandatory use of the E-Verify system) and modest financial controls (making it hard to cash a check or pay remittances without proof of legal status) we can greatly reduce the economic attraction of illegal immigration to the United States. (Border walls, properly understood, are not about illegal roofers and avocado-pickers: They are about terrorists and their instruments.) Jeff Sessions could do a great deal to advance this if he happened to haul in a few poultry-plant bosses or general contractors for employing illegals. There is no shortage of cases from which to choose.

Republicans should pursue this first and in legislative quarantine from other immigration reforms: It emphatically should not be part of a comprehensive immigration-reform package. Illegal immigration is focus, now illegal. We can take positive steps to control this problem right now, in a relatively straightforward fashion at relatively low cost. If our more libertarian-leaning friends are correct (Id bet against them here) and the nations agricultural industry is hamstrung by a lack of workers if the United States should decide that it has a shortage of poor people with few professional skills then that problem can be addressed in the future fairly easily. If what happens instead is that the price of tomatoes and landscaping labor goes up a little bit, then the republic shall endure.

There are many good and useful proposals for immigration, such as replacing family-oriented chain migration with a policy oriented more toward the economic needs and economic interests of the United States. President Trumps radical proposal would reduce immigration to levels not seen since...the 1980s, which is to say, to a few hundred thousand immigrants per year rather than the million or million-plus of recent years. A period of relatively low immigration might help in the projection of assimilation, which currently is producing mixed results. My own preference is for an economically oriented policy that, callous as it may sound, is approximately Cato for rich people and Krikorian for poor ones: Bring on the highly educated and affluent, the doctors and investors and entrepreneurs, and maybe take a pass on the 13 millionth day-laborer.

Thats a debate worth having. Indeed, the failures of Republican health-care and tax-reform efforts suggest very strongly that we need to have more of those debates in order to forge some kind of politically viable consensus behind conservative policy projects. But we do not have to do everything at once. Addressing illegal immigration is something we can do right now, something that Republicans and (most) Democrats can get behind and should get behind.

READ MORE: The Anomaly of American Immigration Time to End DACA On Immigration, Poetry Isnt Policy, but Poetry Matters

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent.

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Immigration: Stop Illegal Entry before Doing Anything Else | National ... - National Review