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Understanding the Trump-backed proposal to overhaul our immigration policy.
The RAISE Act, which stands for Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, is a bill introduced earlier this year by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., and publicly backed last week by President Donald Trump.
Though it stands little chance of passing anytime soon, some supporters are seeing it as a “great start” and as a “terrific opening bid,” in the words of National Review’s Robert VerBruggen.
So what’s in the bill?
Think of immigration reform as a category of policy proposal that seeks to alter either immigration levels or immigrant types, or both. The RAISE Act worries less about levels and more about types.
To be sure, the RAISE Act would alter immigration levels: It would definitely reduce legal immigration, probably increase illegal immigration, and almost certainly reduce overall immigration.
According to the Department of Homeland Security’s “2015 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics” (we don’t have the 2016 version yet), the U.S. added 1,051,031 legal immigrants in 2015. The RAISE Act, according to a data summary provided by Cotton, would reduce that number by 41 percent within the first year of implementation and by 50 percent in year 10.
The reason why I said this bill worries less about immigration levels than it does about immigrant types is because of the way it achieves this reduction. A legislator could ensure a drop in overall immigration by leaving our system intact yet calling for fewer immigrants under each classification. This would leave the immigration priorities and emphases as they are, yet secure the reduction by simply admitting fewer immigrants of each type.
That’s not the approach of the RAISE Act. --->The article continues and goes into much more detail HERE
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