President Trump proposes a dramatic shift in legal immigration
Trump calls for a dramatic shift from a family-based system to one that rewards education and skills; chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports.
“Mr. President: reopen the government and we can work to resolve our differences over border security,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proclaimed.
Over and over Democrats assured us they were serious about border security, but they would only negotiate once the government was back at work.
It is now more than 100 days since President Trump ended the shutdown and Democrats are not at the table. Instead, they are wasting 12 hours on the House floor reciting line by line from a very expensive taxpayer-funded Two Act drama -- The Mueller report. (In case you don’t have the time – Spoiler Alert: There was no collusion).
TRUMP UNVEILS PLAN TO ‘TRANSFORM’ AMERICA’S IMMIGRATION SYSTEM, FOCUS ON HIGH-SKILLED WORKERS
Americans are tired of the theater. The only concession we’ve gotten from Democrats is their admission of the emergency at the border, after accusing the president of “manufacturing a crisis” in January. But where is the Democrats’ plan?
Throughout this debate, President Trump has offered practical solutions to address a broken immigration system and concessions to the other side. Democrats have offered nothing, except obstruction and resistance, their modus operandi since November 2016.
Now, after months of hard work from senior administration officials, the president has a common-sense plan that will not only end the crisis but modernize our legal immigration system. The proposal would benefit our economy, our workers and our immigrants, who are already here legally, for years to come.
The current system is broken. It has not seen structural reform in 54 years – a decade before Joe Biden came to the swamp. Today, only 12 percent of immigrants coming into the United States are admitted based on their job skills. The vast majority are distant relatives of people selected at random.
In other words: our system is not based on the American ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity. It is largely based on bloodline; a caste system that is antithetical to our nation’s founding.
No industrialized nation operates this way. In Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and other countries the numbers are reversed. They want the best and brightest to come and contribute to their economies. It is far past the time America did the same.
We need an immigration system for the 21st century. Thanks to pro-growth policies of tax cuts and deregulation the economy is roaring. Wages are rising fastest for the lowest income Americans. Increasing the number of low-wage workers – a byproduct of our current immigration system – will hinder that progress.
We have 1 million more job openings than unemployed workers. We cannot afford to wait 15 years for immigrants in specialized industries to navigate the archaic maze that is our current system. And they won’t either.
A system that prioritizes pro-American, highly-skilled workers – while securing the border, keeping immediate families together and finally putting an end to the humanitarian crisis – is common sense.
I can see why 2020 Democratic candidates would not be on board. They say America was “never as great as advertised,” yet they want open borders. They want sanctuary cities for criminal aliens. That is until President Trump calls their bluff. They vow to tear down existing border walls they once voted for. They refuse to call murderous gang members who behead people “animals,” if only because the president used the word.
There’s no shortage of politics on the campaign trail or on Capitol Hill, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the White House’s proposal is “dead on arrival.” Whoops, that was also a headline from January 2018, when the administration offered concessions on DACA in exchange for wall funding. Now, here we are 16 months later -- President Trump is continuing to work on solutions for the American people, while the Democrats keep rejecting proposals outright before even looking at them.
When the government reopened on January 25, Pelosi said now “we can have a discussion on how to secure our borders.”
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“It is very clear that we all understand the importance of securing our borders and we have some very good ideas on how,” Pelosi said.
It would be nice if she shared them.