The USA has not always used a family based immigration policy. Returning to a merit policy, although a mild one, I think would do a great good for the USA.
Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so it would be best if the Reps and the Dems worked together on this.
I don't have a fundamental problem with trying to get the best people to emigrate into the US but...from what I've read, the current merit system is suspect. But the real problem I see with this legal immigration plan is the fact it's trying to cut legal immigration about in half...
Now the alt right and populists may like this but in point of fact it would have a real negative impact in actual growth. The US population growth is down:
Growth of U.S. Population Is at Slowest Pace Since 1937The United States population grew by 0.7 percent in the last year, its smallest annual expansion in 80 years, the Census Bureau said this week.
The nation added about 2.2 million people from July 2015 to July 2016, bringing the total population to just over 323 million. In relative terms, that was the slowest rate of annual growth since 1937, though census methods have changed over that time.
The sluggishness is nothing new: The American population entered a period of slow expansion in recent years, with growth averaging just over 0.7 percent in the 2010s, according to an analysis of census data. The rate averaged about 1 percent annually in the 2000s and 1.2 percent in the 1990s. In the 1950s, the middle of the baby boom, growth averaged 1.8 percent each year.
So, as our own population has tapered off, we've made up for the reduction by the increase in legal immigrants–and our economy is now the better for it.
Also, there's the question of legal immigrants doing the work no American would accept...
Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the jobThe flow of labor began drying up when President Obama tightened the border. Now President Trump is promising to deport more people, raid more companies and build a wall on the southern border.
That has made California farms a proving ground for the Trump team’s theory that by cutting off the flow of immigrants they will free up more jobs for American-born workers and push up their wages.
So far, the results aren’t encouraging for farmers or domestic workers.
Farmers are being forced to make difficult choices about whether to abandon some of the state’s hallmark fruits and vegetables, move operations abroad, import workers under a special visa or replace them altogether with machines.
Growers who can afford it have already begun raising worker pay well beyond minimum wage. Wages for crop production in California increased by 13% from 2010 to 2015, twice as fast as average pay in the state, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So, if the numbers of legal immigrants is cut, particularly in favor of college grads which speak English (you don't need to speak English to work in fields) ya know what happens...the cost of food will rise and that hurts everybody but hurts lower economic people worse.
And guess what–this is gonna hurt Trump voters the hardest because, well, it's the Red States that are the primary agro businesses that will be hurt.
And remember, we've already learned the Law Of Unintended Consequences...it's older but still relevant:
The Law Of Unintended Consequences: Georgia's Immigration Law BackfiresTo forgo a repeat of last year, when labor shortages triggered an estimated $140 million in agricultural losses, as crops rotted in the fields, officials in Georgia are now dispatching prisoners to the state’s farms to help harvest fruit and vegetables.
The labor shortages, which also have affected the hotel and restaurant industries, are a consequence of Georgia’s immigration enforcement law, HB 87, which was passed last year. As State Rep. Matt Ramsey, one of the bill’s authors, said at the time, “Our goal is … to eliminate incentives for illegal aliens to cross into our state.”
Now he and others are learning: Be careful what you wish for, because you may get more than you bargained for.
The odds are pretty good that this immigration effort won't find itself in any laws because Trump is toxic and to really do immigration reform it will take a bipartisan effort which basically means Congress needs to work together and pretty much ignore the
Big Orange Dummy™ like they did for the Russian sanctions...if Congress can get veto proof consensus then Trump becomes irrelevant–which he's becoming more and more.
