White House Backs Senate Bill To Cut Legal Immigration, Move To Merit-Based System

The White House is working with leading Republican senators to draft a bill that would slash annual legal immigration levels by half, part of a broader reform that would move the U.S. immigration system from family chain migration to a merit-based approach.

President Donald Trump plans to back a bill from GOP Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia that would cut the number of legal immigrants admitted to the U.S. each year from about 1 million to 500,000 over the next decade.

The proposal, which is set to be introduced later this summer, has been closely coordinated with senior Trump advisors Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, reports Politico. Miller and Bannon are known for their hawkish positions on illegal immigration and also for advocating a reduction in legal immigrants.

White House officials told Politico the upcoming bill is a revised and expanded version of the RAISE Act, which Cotton and Perdue introduced in February and which Trump touted at the time. The RAISE Act eliminates the visa lottery program, caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year and, perhaps most importantly to immigration hawks, ends so-called chain migration.

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