Chris Chmielenski |
This Issue: USA Today Editorial Shifts Immigration Debate to Chain Migration
When
a mainstream media outlet calls for an end to Chain Migration, the
debate over legal immigration is heading in the right direction!
Earlier this week, the editorial board for the nation's largest newspaper, USA Today,
offered a quasi-endorsement of Pres. Trump's proposal to move the legal
immigration system away from favoring extended family connections and
towards placing a greater emphasis on one's skills. You can read the
full editorial here.
This
sort of commentary from a mainstream news outlet was unheard of several
months ago. The tendency for the MSM has been to side with the big
businesses that seek cheap, foreign labor and provide news outlets with
coveted advertising dollars. But Pres. Trump's focus throughout the
campaign on protecting American workers, particularly those who have
been impacted by massive amounts of unskilled labor through legal
immigration, has opened the door for a debate shift.
In fact, a few passages from the USA Today editorial sounded less like the country's establishment media and more like what one would find on the NumbersUSA website.
The USA Today
editorial wasn't perfect, however. First, they mischaracterized the
points-based system in the 2007 Kennedy-Bush-McCain amnesty bill that
would have replaced the family-preference system. The bill did eliminate
the chain migration green card categories, but replaced it with a
system that would have awarded points, not just for skills and
education, but also for extended family connections.
Second,
the editorial board threw its support behind a proposal similar to the
STAPLE Act -- a bill that would "staple" green cards to the diplomas of
certain foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges and
universities.
Still,
the focus on ending chain migration and adding that "family-based
immigration account for about half of the total" of annual green cards
is positive and a move in the right direction. That sentiment should
spill over to the paper's coverage of the RAISE Act, introduced by Sens.
Tom Cotton and David Perdue, that would end chain migration.
NumbersUSA
was founded on the mission to reduce overall immigration numbers,
including an end to Chain Migration. Ending Chain Migration was also a
key recommendation of the last bipartisan commission for immigration
reform chaired by the late Civil Rights icon Barbara Jordan. The
Commission sought to reduce annual green card numbers to 550,000
primarily by ending Chain Migration and the Visa Lottery. The
Cotton/Perdue RAISE Act would do exactly that -- end Chain Migration and
the Visa Lottery.
Hopefully, more mainstream news outlets will follow USA Today's
lead and expand the immigration debate to include a discussion over
issues like chain migration. More examples like this could motivate the
Trump administration to move reducing legal immigration up the priority
list.Visit NumbersUSA |
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