Republicans aim to cut immigration by 40%

Currently one to 1 ½ million person get a green card every year. I have posted before on a long-time shift of Republicans to greater restriction, despite a poll showing that only 17% of Americans favor a decrease in immigration. The House appears to be almost evenly divided over restriction Ron Brownstein of CNN noted this:

“With last week’s vote in the House of Representatives on hardline immigration legislation from GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, about three-fourths of Republicans in both the House and Senate have voted this year to cut legal immigration by about 40%. That would represent, by far, the largest reduction in legal immigration since Congress voted in 1924 to virtually shut off immigration for the next four decades.

The 40% estimate comes from the Cato Institute. “By far the worst aspect of the Securing America’s Future Act are the cuts to legal immigration overall (pp. 5-21). The bill authors claim that it would cut immigration by 25 percent—some 2.6 million people per decade—but in reality, it would be closer to 430,000, almost a 40 percent decline. This would be the largest policy-driven reduction in legal immigration since the awful, racially motivated acts of the 1920s.”

The Securing America’s Future Act (H.R. 4760) was filed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on January 10, 2018. The bill would give Dreamers a three year visa with no right to permanent stay or citizenship, restrict family reunification to spouses and minor children (thus removing adult children and parents), shift the visa lottery to economic visas, and boost border security. Goodlatte told reporters, “I think there are a lot of other things that need to be done on immigration.”

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