The new White House immigration
proposal is intended as a policy road map,
showing what Republicans are for, not
merely what they are against. As such, it
has many strengths — but also one large
weakness.
The plan’s most significant change is to
focus family immigration on the nuclear
family, rather than other adult relatives
who have their own families. Those other
categories are the drivers of chain
migration — when, for instance, an
immigrant, now a citizen, sponsors his
brother, who moves here with his wife,
who eventually sponsors her own siblings,
and so on.
Research shows that each immigrant over
time brings in an average of 3.45
additional immigrants. In other words,
immigration to America is now largely
based on who you know, not what you
know.
The president’s proposed merit-based
system would change this by putting more
emphasis on a prospective immigrant’s
skills and education.
The White House is to be commended for
proposing these and other changes.
OUR VIEW: How immigration plan could
migrate from doubtful to doable
owever, there is one serious flaw in this
plan. It explicitly endorses the current
level of legal immigration of 1.1 million
new green cards every year, contrary to
the president’s repeated prior statements.
That might not be a big problem if this
were a bill that had emerged from the
congressional meat-grinder. Politics is,
after all, the art of the possible.
But this plan is not a bill — it’s a campaign
document, intended to reflect Republican
concerns and preferences. This is why the
lack of even a token reduction in overall
immigration is so disappointing — it
presents the current 1.1 million per year as
a given.
Even a proposed cut to “just” 1 million a
year would have been an acknowledgment
the administration understood that there
are problems with mass immigration that
go beyond the question of immigrant skills,
related to assimilation, security, crowding,
etc.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center
for Immigration Studies.
Liproposal is intended as a policy road map,
showing what Republicans are for, not
merely what they are against. As such, it
has many strengths — but also one large
weakness.
The plan’s most significant change is to
focus family immigration on the nuclear
family, rather than other adult relatives
who have their own families. Those other
categories are the drivers of chain
migration — when, for instance, an
immigrant, now a citizen, sponsors his
brother, who moves here with his wife,
who eventually sponsors her own siblings,
and so on.
Research shows that each immigrant over
time brings in an average of 3.45
additional immigrants. In other words,
immigration to America is now largely
based on who you know, not what you
know.
The president’s proposed merit-based
system would change this by putting more
emphasis on a prospective immigrant’s
skills and education.
The White House is to be commended for
proposing these and other changes.
OUR VIEW: How immigration plan could
migrate from doubtful to doable
owever, there is one serious flaw in this
plan. It explicitly endorses the current
level of legal immigration of 1.1 million
new green cards every year, contrary to
the president’s repeated prior statements.
That might not be a big problem if this
were a bill that had emerged from the
congressional meat-grinder. Politics is,
after all, the art of the possible.
But this plan is not a bill — it’s a campaign
document, intended to reflect Republican
concerns and preferences. This is why the
lack of even a token reduction in overall
immigration is so disappointing — it
presents the current 1.1 million per year as
a given.
Even a proposed cut to “just” 1 million a
year would have been an acknowledgment
the administration understood that there
are problems with mass immigration that
go beyond the question of immigrant skills,
related to assimilation, security, crowding,
etc.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center
for Immigration Studies.
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