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President Trump on Wednesday heralded a bill curtailing legal immigration that has been stalled in Congress for months and would now give preference to people who speak English.
The RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment ) Act has been sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee since it was introduced in February by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, who flanked Trump at his Roosevelt Room announcement. The two senators unveiled a revised version at the White House Wednesday.
Trump's brief comments — he didn't take questions — were peppered with unproven remarks like immigrants are dependent on welfare and notions that play to cultural fears, like saying immigrants need to culturally "assimilate" in America. (The White House, in part, has cited this study conducted by a thank tank that advocates against immigration.)
"This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy," Trump said. "The RAISE Act prevents new migrants and new immigrants from collecting welfare and protects U.S. workers from being displaced."
"The reforms in the RAISE Act will help ensure that newcomers to our wonderful country will be assimilated, will succeed and will achieve the American dream," he continued.
The bill is unlikely to be passed by Congress.
"I like their suggestions," Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told BuzzFeed News. "But as they came to my office and I talked to them, we have a major problem that any bill you get out on the floor, the people that don’t want any immigration will try to amend it, and the people that want citizenship yesterday for the people who have come here undocumented, they will amend it, and if you could just get a clean bill like they’re suggesting through, I would be very much for going that route.
"But," Grassley added, "I think it’s an impossibility."
It's unlikely that the bill will gain support from Republicans who have taken more moderate stances on immigration issues, such as Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain. But even if they did somehow get on board, Republicans would still need at least eight Democratic senators to support it for it to pass, which is extremely unlikely.
After Wednesday's event, Graham tweeted that the bill would be "devastating to SC [South Carolina's] economy".
The announcement comes off a tumultuous two weeks for Trump — his health care bill was defeated, he shook up his staff several times, and the Russian investigations raise new questions almost daily. Wednesday's event provided tough-on-immigration talking points that will likely play well with Trump's base.
Trump’s support of the bill is partly in contrast to statements he made two months ago to The Economist supporting legal immigration.
"I want people to come into the country legally. No, legally? No. I want people to come in legally. But I want people to come in on merit.”
Asked if he would cut the numbers of legal immigrants, he said, “Oh yeah, no, no, no, no, we want people coming in legally. No, very strongly. Now they’re going to be much more strongly vetted as you see.”
He went on to say that he wanted farm workers to continue to immigrate to the US. “We also want farm workers to be able to come in. You know, we’re going to have work visas for the farm workers. If you look, you know we have a lot of people coming through the border, they’re great people and they work on the farms and then they go back home. We like those people a lot and we want them to continue to come in.”
The legislation proposes cutting legal immigration in half from around 1 million people each year to around 500,000 by 2027. It aims to do that mostly by reducing the number of family-based visas issued, in part by limiting the extended family members who qualify, including adult children. It also limits the number of refugees allowed to enter the country to 50,000 per year, and eliminates the Green Card visa lottery program.
The bill, if passed, would be a step in line with the president's executive order — which will go before the Supreme Court in October — temporarily banning all refugee arrivals to the US. Refugee resettlement agencies say it would drastically change the role America has historically played as a world leader during humanitarian crises.
“In the face of the largest global refugee crisis in recorded history, restricting refugee admissions to 50,000 would run contrary to America’s proud tradition offering safe haven to those fleeing violence and persecution," said Mark Hetfield, President and CEO of HIAS, a refugee resettlement agency that works with refugees arriving in the US, in a statement.
(In 2013, 2014, and 2015, nearly 70,000 refugees were admitted to the US each year. according to the State Department).
Senators Cotton and Perdue worked with Trump advisor Stephen Miller on the bill, according to Politico. Miller is known for his anti-immigrant stances and rhetoric against multiculturalism.
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Trump said Wednesday that the bill is about attracting more skilled workers to the country. The legislation does not increase the number of skilled workers who would be allowed to immigrate, but introduces a "points system" based on age, education, profession, awards, investment capacity and English language proficiency. Trump mentioned his preference for a merit-based system during an address to Congress earlier this year.
In April, a group of 1,470 economists wrote a letter to legislators expressing their professional consensus that immigration — both low-skilled and highly-skilled — benefits the US economy.
"Some of us favor free markets while others have
championed for a larger role for government in the economy. But on some issues there is near
universal agreement. One such issue concerns the broad economic benefit that immigrants to this country bring," the economists wrote.
The group that coordinated the letter, the New American Economy (NAE), is made up of around 500 mayors of both parties and business leaders including co-chairs Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg, and mayors from cities in Illinois, Texas, South Carolina, Michigan and Utah, among others.
NAE Executive Director Jeremy Robbins told BuzzFeed News that from his group's perspective, attracting highly-skilled immigrants is a good thing. "But the notion that to do this you need to dramatically reduce low-skilled immigration is not only unsupported by economics, it's contradicted by it," he said.
One of the problems with the bill, Robbins said, is that it assumes that the number of jobs in the economy never changes, and that everyone—immigrants and citizens—is competing for the same set of jobs.
"The problem that Senator Cotton seeks to address — namely the impact of globalization and automation on millions of American workers — is very real. But immigration has far more potential to be a solution to that problem than an exacerbater of it, if we get the policy right, since it is a way for America to ensure we have the skills to meet the new economy so that our companies can grow and better create jobs," he said.
Lissandra Villa Huerta contributed to this report
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