President Trump proposed a change to legal immigration.
The RAISE Act would limit family immigration rights to the actual nuclear family: husbands, wives, and little kids of American citizens and legal residents. The current categories for adult siblings, adult sons and daughters, and parents would be retired. U.S. citizens could still bring in their elderly parents in need of caretaking, but only on renewable nonimmigrant visas (no green cards or citizenship) and only after proving that they’ve paid for health insurance up front.
The second major element in this restructuring addresses the employment-based immigration flow. It is now a jumble of categories and subcategories, the main result of which is to provide steady work for immigration lawyers. The Cotton-Perdue bill would rationalize this mess by creating one, streamlined points system, along the lines of similar schemes in Canada and Australia. Points would be awarded to potential candidates based mainly on education, English-language ability and age, and those who meet a certain benchmark would be in the pool for green cards, with the top scorers being selected first.
The bill would also eliminate the egregious Diversity Visa Lottery and cap refugee admissions at fifty thousand per year, rather than allow the president let in as many as he wants, as is the case today.
As a legal immigrant and naturalized citizen, RAISE makes sense for two reasons:
First, no one has a right to bring your extended family and distant relatives to the U.S.; and
Second, most countries have a merit based legal immigration program. I remember working in Mexico for a U.S. company and having to prove to the Mexico consulate that I was not going to be a burden to the country.
So RAISE makes sense and limits family to immediate family not the uncle that you have not seen for years who suddenly wants to come to the U.S.
Of course, we are talking about routine legal immigration. We are not talking about political refugees or exiles who should be treated on a case-by-case basis. The U.S. should always be the destination for those seeking freedom, as was the case of my family in the 1960s.
Finally, we just learned that we may have a shortage of doctors in the near future. Well, let’s ease the way for doctors to come to the U.S. and fill that need. This is exactly what immigration laws are for and why RAISE will prove beneficial in the future,
Tags: RAISE, the new approach to legal immigration To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!
