RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/20/merit-based-immigration-reform-precisely-america-needs/

It’s time to acknowledge that the current family reunion system is broken. So a good question for Democrats is: Why would they reject changes to this system?

President Trump announced an immigration overhaul proposal on Thursday. He wants to maintain the current number of legal immigrants we admit annually at about 1.1 million, but he proposes to change our immigration system from emphasizing family re-unification to emphasizing skill-based immigrants. This is truly the best way forward to fix our broken immigration system.

For decades, our immigration laws have given overwhelming preference to applicants with family already residing in the United States. More than 60 percent of annual immigration visas are allocated for family reunification, while less than 20 percent of the annual visa quota is allocated for skill-based immigrants.

This approach doesn’t serve our nation’s needs because (a) the quota for family reunion is not based on labor-market demand; and (b) the visa preference hierarchy favors the old (parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents) and the young (children younger than 21 years of age) but discriminates against the most likely productive potential citizens, people who may not have family connections, but do have knowledge, skills, and experiences that can contribute to our country.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/19/trumps-immigration-pitch-has-real-merit/

President Trump on Thursday rolled out his administration’s first, substantive take on immigration reform, and the reactions have been what you’d expect.

Democrats and some Republicans immediately panned the proposal because it doesn’t provide amnesty to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (otherwise known as President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty), or to anyone else.

Republicans, in general, were more circumspect. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a noncommittal response, with a nod toward the dispute he is currently embroiled in with Democrats, who continue to block the administration’s request for more humanitarian funding at the border. (Yes, the same party who lambasts the president for his supposed lack of humanitarian care for migrants also refuses to give him funding to do exactly that.)

But a review of the plan itself, which deals largely with the legal immigration system, suggests that it fills a critical role for Republicans.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/merit-based-immigration-plan-serves-us-interests/

The general idea is a good one: The U.S. has interests of its own, and immigration should serve them first and foremost.

Having chain-migrated his way into the White House and a little bit of political power, Donald Trump’s son-in-law is shopping around an immigration plan. And if you can get past the hilarious juxtaposition of the words “merit-based” and “Jared Kushner,” it’s a pretty good one.

As things stand, the majority of immigrants to the United States (the majority of legal immigrants, anyway) qualify for entry on the basis of having a family member legally present in the United States. This is the mechanism behind what is known as “chain migration,” in which one member of a family provides entry to another, who provides entry to another, who provides entry to another, and so on.

In contrast, a small share of immigrants — about 12 percent — enter the country on the basis of a job offer or the possession of certain skills or education that make them desirable to employers. (Others enter as investors, coming in as potential employers rather than potential employees.) These are everything from doctors to software developers.

Kushner’s agenda is to reverse those proportions, reducing the number of entrants through family-based immigration and loosening up restrictions on highly skilled workers. The plan would also eliminate the “lottery,” the visa system under which 50,000 applicants are selected randomly (almost randomly, anyway) in the name of diversity, albeit a kind of diversity that excludes Canadians, Englishmen, Indians, Brazilians, Nigerians, and many others. It is difficult to think of a worse criterion for the admission of new Americans than randomness.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/trump-administration-immigration-plan-emphasizes-skills/

Donald Trump has associated himself with the radical idea that the United States should have a legal-immigration system like that of Canada.

He unveiled an immigration plan on Thursday that would emphasize skills, moving us closer to the Canadian model from our current, foolishly monomaniacal focus on family reunification.

The problem with letting immigrants bring in all sort of relatives is that it makes the immigration system random, and effectively takes control over picking and choosing who will come here out of our hands. The Trump plan would limit family immigration to immediate family — spouses and minor children — and eliminate the visa lottery, which is just as arbitrary as it sounds.

Instead, the emphasis would be on a point system and higher-skilled immigrants with extraordinary talents, professional vocations, and academic accomplishments.

The plan also includes an array of welcome enforcement measures, although it’s not clear yet if it includes the most important of all, an E-Verify system for employers that would do much to turn off the jobs magnet drawing illegal immigrants here.

There is a lot to commend in the plan. It would be a significant step toward making our immigration system more rational. With so many people around the world desperate to come here, it is insane that we aren’t choosing the immigrants who best serve our interests. Under the plan, we would favor the immigrants best-suited to thriving in a 21st century economy and English and civics tests would select for immigrants with the best chance of easily assimilating.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273652/jihad-border-michael-cutler

On Sunday, April 28, 2019, CBS News program, 60 Minutes reported on The Situation At The Southern Border.

Here is how the 60 Minutes’ report began:

Earlier this month, President Trump placed Kevin McAleenan in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. The president fired his previous DHS chief, Kirstjen Nielsen, because he said he wanted to go in a tougher direction. As the new acting secretary, McAleenan is facing the largest wave of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in a decade. 100,000 migrants were detained just last month. So we went to McAllen, Texas, one of the busiest sections on the border, to see for ourselves. We were surprised how many families were crossing, where they were detained and how quickly they were released. We asked Secretary McAleenan how he plans to manage the crisis and navigate what may be the most difficult job in Washington.

It is worth noting that 60 Minutes described the situation as a “crisis” a reality denied by many Democrats.

The 60 Minutes team was given access to the McAllen Border Patrol Station where, at the time, was housing 551 aliens who were being processed after they crossed into the United States.

Here is an excerpt from the 60 Minutes report:

Chief Patrol Agent Rudy Karisch says they are struggling to care for the increasing numbers of families.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What are the agents having to do to deal with this new population that’s coming across?

Agent Rudy Karisch: Forty percent of my workforce right now is dedicated to the processing, to the care and feeding, to the hospital watch. So that takes that 40 percent away from their border security mission.

Thus the ability of the already beleaguered U.S. Border Patrol to secure our porous and dangerous southern border has been diminished by 40%.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cotton-condemns-trumps-plan-to-issue-more-guest-worker-visas/

Tom Cotton is a star and my favorite Senator, but instead of carping, propose legislation and immigration reform to deal with a serious crisis . rsk
Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on Monday blasted President Trump’s plan to issue an additional 30,000 guest-worker visas to foreign laborers in fiscal year 2019.

Under the plan, which is laid out in a temporary rule set to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor will grant the additional visas to workers whose employers who would suffer “irreparable harm” otherwise, and who were employed in the U.S. during the past three fiscal years.

Cotton, often a staunch Trump ally, lamented the administration’s announcement of the plan Monday, saying the “immigration system should prioritize the needs of U.S. citizens over cheap foreign labor.”

“Allowing an additional 30,000 seasonal workers into the country forces Americans to compete for jobs against non-citizens who drag down wages,” Cotton said. “We should be setting immigration policies that support wage growth and employment for Americans instead of encouraging a race to the bottom by importing low-cost labor.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273626/rent-child-services-thriving-border-matthew-vadum

Mindful of the leftist-led uproar over family separations at the border, immigration scammers are now taking advantage of American good will by “renting” children for cash to illegal aliens crossing the border to help them obtain quick release by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Depending on where you sit, it’s either human-trafficking or social-justice entrepreneurship in action. It was made possible when a leftist, Obama-appointed judge arrogated to herself the role of creating U.S. immigration policy and in the process incentivized the behavior.

Being accompanied by a child is a get-out-of-detention-free card, Charlotte Cuthbertson reports in The Epoch Times.

“You can walk through any of our processing centers and you can see that there are potentially parents, or adults with children, that there may not be a familial relationship,” said Raul Ortiz, Border Patrol chief for Del Rio, Texas.

“There’s probably many more cases like that happening across all nine southwest border sectors on any given day. Really, if you think about it, it’s human trafficking.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273586/floridas-crackdown-sanctuary-cities-begins-matthew-vadum

Florida appears poised to join a righteous law-and-order backlash against so-called sanctuary cities that shield and harbor illegal aliens in defiance of the nation’s immigration laws, after a pro-immigration enforcement bill passed the state’s House of Representatives.

The Sunshine State was home to 775,000 illegal aliens in 2016, according to Pew Research Center.

The state is also home to 15 municipalities that are sanctuary cities, according to Floridians for Immigration Enforcement, which prefers to label those jurisdictions “anarchy cities.”

“Not only do they disobey the law, but I question their loyalty to this country,” David Caulkett, the group’s vice president, said last month.

A bill that cracks down on sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities easily passed the GOP-controlled Florida House and now has a good chance at being approved by the Republican-dominated Florida Senate.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, urged lawmakers to approve legislation taking aim at the state’s outposts of immigration lawlessness.