An America First Immigration Policy

Last Wednesday, something truly remarkable happened: A Republican actually framed an agenda and forced Democrats and their media allies — along with weak-kneed fellow Republicans — to defend their resistance to it.

An updated version of the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act (RAISE) was introduced at the White House by Republican Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue. The bill would give America a skills-based immigration system similar to those of Canada and Australia.

In other words, this is an effort to admit people who are a benefit to America, not people who merely benefit from America.

Thus, “Diversity Lottery Visas” that give 50,000 green cards to immigrants completely at random — for diversity’s sake — would be eliminated. RAISE would also scale back chain migration. Currently, when an immigrant and his or her spouse become a citizen, they can petition to bring in their parents, their adult children, those children’s spouses and children, and their adult siblings.

Chain migration precipitated an increase in immigration from 250,000 per year during the ‘50s and '60s to more than one million annually since 1990.

RAISE “would take a sledgehammer to this system, dramatically reducing low-skilled immigration and revamping our system for skilled immigration,” explains columnist Robert VerBruggen. “It would cut immigration by more than 40 percent immediately, and by half in a decade.”

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