In His SOTU, 2019, President Trump Walks Back Promise To Reduce Legal Immigration

Donald Trump,Elections,IMMIGRATION,Labor,Law,Welfare

            
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During their two years without serious political opposition, the Republicans floated  “The RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act.”

The Act was not exactly negotiated for with great vigor during the Republican dominance on Capitol Hill, from 2017 till 2019.

Still, in his 2019 State of the Union Address, President Trump managed to renege on the promises briefly made in the neglected RAISE Act.

Back in 2017, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies had motivated passionately for RAISE:

Seventy percent of legal immigrants enter the US based on family reunification visas, with no consideration given to their skills and education or the needs of the US economy. Legal immigration at current levels suppresses American wages, especially at the bottom rungs of the labor market. Most legal immigrants enter the US on family visas. RAISE would have slashed the family reunification immigration by 50 percent, from 11 million people every decade to 5 or 6 million, still enormous numbers. Fully half of the legal intake into the US is lacking in skills and constitutes a fiscal drain; roughly 50% of the legal flow enters the US with less than a high-school education. Again, a fiscal drain. The same proportion of households headed by immigrants access one of more the major welfare programs. Help out the poor and let the american taxpayer breathe. … The poor are very poor. You give them a raise by lowering the levels of legal immigration.