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Last week, when Donald Trump publicly endorsed the RAISE Act, a bill that would drastically curb legal immigration to the United States, he did what immigration hard-liners had waited more than two decades for a President to do. The bill, whose acronym is short for Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, was introduced in February by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, both Republicans, but it hadnt attracted much attention until Trump took up its mantle. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first, Trump said at a White House press conference. Our people, our citizens, and our workers, he went on, have struggled while competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals.

While Trump made combating illegal immigration a cornerstone of his Presidential campaign, he also pledged to limit legal immigration. Its this side of the issue thats addressed in the RAISE Act. If it becomes law, it would cut the number of legal permanent residents allowed into the country each year from a million to five hundred thousand, mainly by limiting the number of foreign family members that current residents are allowed to sponsor. Family unity has been one of the core principles of the U.S.s immigration system since the nineteen-sixtiesanyone with citizenship or a green card is allowed to sponsor family membersbut the RAISE Act would cap the number of green cards allocated to family sponsors, and eliminate family sponsorship beyond spouses and minor children. The bill would also implement a point system that would rank applicants seeking to come to the U.S. for workabout a hundred and fifty thousand such people come to the U.S. every yearand give an advantage to immigrants who already speak English.

Proposals to cut legal immigration arent exactly new in Washington. When comprehensive immigration-reform bills were debated in 2006, 2007, and 2013, conservative lawmakers briefly and unsuccessfully pushed to include similar measures. But the last time a plan to cut legal immigration received the kind of attention currently enjoyed by the RAISE Act was 1996. Then, as now, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. Lamar Smith, a congressman from Texas, was the primary force behind a set of sweeping reforms to both legal and illegal immigration. But his effort to cut legal immigration failed: a majority of Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, and a third of House Republicans voted against it. Congress then passed an elaborate system of penalties and enforcement measures for illegal immigration that became the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. That bill, which was signed by President Bill Clinton, laid the groundwork for the system of mass deportation thats in effect today.

Questioning legal immigration hasnt been an exclusively conservative position, however. Today the Democratic Party is seen as being completely in the pro-immigration column, and the Republican Party as being in the anti-immigrant column, Muzaffar Chishti, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, told me. But it wasnt always that way. In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, Democrats, channelling the concerns of organized labor, considered low-skilled immigrants a threat to wages and jobs. Their rhetoric then sounded like Trumps last week. But as Democrats began to feel that their political future depended on a growing population of Hispanic voters, their message changed. The early two-thousands were littered with mea culpas and about-faces from prominent Democrats who, just years before, had taken strong stances against immigration. In 2006, for example, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, who in 1993 introduced a bill to eliminate birthright citizenship, issued a dramatic apology on the Senate floor. Then, in 2010, he excoriated Republicans for advancing a birthright citizenship measure of their own.

And while mainstream members of the Republican Party were once more aligned with pro-business conservatives, who were sanguine about the economic advantages of immigrant workers, a more strident wingepitomized by Smith and Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate to become the Attorney Generalbegan pushing a more general anti-immigrant line that, decades later, has won out in the Trump Administration. Now that the Administration has increased immigration enforcement, its turning to legal immigration, Chishti told me. This is completely out of the Sessions playbook. It did not begin with Trump. This playbook is literal: in 2015, Sessions and his staff produced a twenty-three-page document called Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority. It anatomized how the federal government was failing to enforce immigration laws, and how immigration was causing wages to stagnate and unemployment to persist. Many of these ideas were included in the Republican Partys platform last year, which, for the first time in the Partys history, called for an explicit reduction in legal immigration. For anti-immigration stalwarts, it was Sessionss involvement in Trumps campaign that won their support. Sessions was Trumps Good Housekeeping seal of approval, Mark Krikorian, the head of the influential anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies, told me. Sure, Trump is not a real conservative and hes a little bit unusual, but hes got Sessions.

Its unlikely that the RAISE Act will become laweven today, many Republicans in Congress would likely vote against it. (Some, like Lindsey Graham, have already publicly criticized it.) But in Trump, nativist activists and lawmakers finally have someone in the White House who speaks their language. For the first time ever, a President has sought a reduction in legal immigration, Chishti told me. Even when Congress has been hostile to immigration, the President has always stood on the other side of the issue. This is from Wilson to Truman; it was true of Kennedy and Johnson and Reagan, all the way to George W. Bush and Obama. There have been no exceptionsuntil now.

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The Decades-Long Campaign to Cut Legal Immigration - The New Yorker

BOURBONNAIS, Ill. On the day that Jay Cutler arrived in Miami to come out of retirement for the proverbial one last job like in the movies, there were three Chicago Bears quarterbacks struggling to handle what had been Cutlers old job.

Nothing too alarming, mind you, and there were some good moments, too, in Mondays practice. Plus, theres the matter of the anticlimax: Mike Glennon is going to be the Bears starter to start the season; the only real question at this point is whether Mark Sanchez can hold his spot as the backup, ahead of No. 2 overall pick Mitchell Trubisky.

But the Cutler news added a little intrigue and texture to the Bears current QB hierarchy after the team let him go in the offseason, following season-ending shoulder surgery and his own struggles during the teams 3-13 campaign that leaves many of the holdovers in the hot seat heading into this season.

Head coach John Fox, though, said hes happy for Cutler, his starter for two seasons in Chicago. Fox said he texted the new Dolphins quarterback well wishes after hearing the news that he was forgoing a broadcasting career with FOX to help the suddenly needy Dolphins, who have lost Ryan Tannehill indefinitely.

I think its great, Fox said. I am happy for him. Its another opportunity, and its all guys can ask for. We wish him nothing but the best.

Fox added that Cutlers familiarity of the Dolphins scheme, which head coach Adam Gase is keeping much of after coaching Cutler with the Bears in 2015, should be a big benefit to making the transition more seamless.

Therell be some carryover for sure, Fox said. Hes a sharp guy.

The Bears decided to move on in the offseason, given the financial flexibility of doing so, as well as the injury. But there also had not been enough progress at the position for the franchises liking, so thats why Glennon was signed to be the starter now, Trubisky drafted to be the future and Sanchez added to buttress the two.

I was happy with [Cutler] both years, Fox said. I dont think I would say I was happy with our seasons [6-10 and 3-13 records]. He was a smart, tough guy that worked hard. When we departed, we wish it went a different way. I am sure he feels the same way.

On Monday, Sanchez save for one horrible decision on a would-be pick-6 might have been the most effective of the three new quarterbacks. Glennon was fine, getting the offense back on track after a slow first period of practice, and showing some nice touch in the red zone. His intangibles have stood out the most to many observers, but the deep ball remains a work in progress when he's running the offense.

Some of Trubiskys best moments in camp have been when hes been able to unleash his golden arm, lacing some pretty throws. But on Monday, he appeared a bit skittish on a few reps, with inconsistent footwork and accuracy on his throws.

Glennon said hes likely to keep an eye on Cutler as a fan and given that many of Cutlers former teammates, he said, have been talking about his return to the league since the news broke.

Maybe Ill follow it more closely, Glennon said. It seems like a good opportunity for him. I know its a big story here in Chicago, but its no different for me.

But for Bears fans? Given that Cutler was such a divisive figure for more than eight years in the city, its very possible that theyll be keeping closer tabs really on Cutler more than they are on Glennon. After all, Glennon is more of a caretaker or placeholder until Trubisky is deemed ready, whenever that might be. Cutler suddenly has become one of the early stories of the 2017 season. The production, effectiveness and statistics of Glennon and Cutler surely will be put side by side more than once in the coming months.

Glennon doesnt appear too concerned. He has a job to do, and his first preseason game his first real audition as Bears starter comes Thursday at home in the opener against the Denver Broncos.

Itll be my first time playing with this offense [in a real-game situation], and the first time for a few guys, Glennon said. I just want to go out, do a good job of moving the ball, scoring some points and just executing our offense.

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The Case For Merit-Based Immigration Reform - Kokomo Perspective

Conservative efforts at health-care reform are, for the moment, a shambles. Conservative efforts at tax reform are foundering as well, though their prospects may be sunnier, given the habitual Republican appetite for tax cuts of almost any description, including irresponsible ones.

Both the tax-reform project and the health-care project have run into trouble because of a lack of intellectual and political leadership: Washingtons sock drawers are stuffed full of conservative proposals to rationalize taxes and to nudge health care in a more market-oriented direction, but herding those congressional cats and conservative activists, think-tankers, PACs and super PACs, aspiring presidents, etc. in the same direction requires real political leadership. That is made difficult by the fact that the loudest conservative voices the talking mouths of cable news and the talk-radio ranters have a very heavy financial incentive to be dissatisfied, or at least to pronounce themselves dissatisfied, with whatever it is that Republican congressional leaders decide to support, while the president himself, who has decided that railing against Congress will be his substitute for leading them in his direction, has similar incentives.

If these two issues are any indicator, then the Trump administrations keystone issue immigration reform is on a course to end up wrecked upon the same rocky shoals.

Can that be prevented?

The Republican party is at odds with itself over what it actually wants out of an immigration policy. One the one hand, libertarian-leading Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce crowd think that the case for free trade is also the case, more or less, for free immigration, that the free flow of goods and capital across borders ought to be complemented by the free flow of labor. The open borders Republican is mainly a straw man deployed by the talk-radio gang: Advocates of a genuine open-borders policy of the sort that Great Britain maintained in the 19th century, when immigrants could show up in London without so much as proof of identity (much less a visa), are scarce. But there are a fair number of Republicans who prefer relatively high levels of immigration, including relatively high numbers of low-skilled immigrant workers from Latin America.

Opposing them are more restrictionist populist-nationalist Republicans, some of them in the Trump mold and some of them intelligent and responsible. These include those who see the world the way my colleague Mark Krikorian does, believing that current levels of immigration are bad for domestic workers, especially low-wage workers, and that recent immigrants have placed undue burdens on domestic institutions, especially the social-welfare and criminal-justice systems. They want lower immigration across the board, not only a crackdown on illegal immigration but also a significant reduction in legal immigration.

Can these differences be resolved in such a way as to allow the emergence of a unified Republicans approach to immigration?

Yes. And not only that: Democrats can be brought on board, too.

Democrats, in reaction to Trump, are at the moment moving rhetorically in a more liberal direction on immigration. But that is not where the Democratic base is right now, especially in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. At Bernie Sanders rallies I attended in Iowa during the primaries, union-hall Democrats offered up many an earful about the need for immigration control, and Senator Sanders himself denounced the Republican view of immigration as an open borders scheme hatched by right-wing billionaires looking to undermine the economic position of the American working class. Many of those voters no doubt cross the aisle for Donald Trump in places such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Democrats cannot afford to lose those voters permanently, and they know as much.

So, where to begin?

Begin by cordoning off the issue of illegal immigration.

With the exception of a few oddballs and ideologues, we can all agree that whatever our national immigration policy ends up being, it must be conducted in an orderly and lawful fashion. That means that getting control of illegal immigration needs to be the first order of business. Happily, that is something we can do without waiting years or decades to build new walls that will, in the end, address the problem only partially. (Most illegals do not wade across the Rio Grande; they enter legally on visas and then violate them.) Through workplace enforcement (mandatory use of the E-Verify system) and modest financial controls (making it hard to cash a check or pay remittances without proof of legal status) we can greatly reduce the economic attraction of illegal immigration to the United States. (Border walls, properly understood, are not about illegal roofers and avocado-pickers: They are about terrorists and their instruments.) Jeff Sessions could do a great deal to advance this if he happened to haul in a few poultry-plant bosses or general contractors for employing illegals. There is no shortage of cases from which to choose.

Republicans should pursue this first and in legislative quarantine from other immigration reforms: It emphatically should not be part of a comprehensive immigration-reform package. Illegal immigration is focus, now illegal. We can take positive steps to control this problem right now, in a relatively straightforward fashion at relatively low cost. If our more libertarian-leaning friends are correct (Id bet against them here) and the nations agricultural industry is hamstrung by a lack of workers if the United States should decide that it has a shortage of poor people with few professional skills then that problem can be addressed in the future fairly easily. If what happens instead is that the price of tomatoes and landscaping labor goes up a little bit, then the republic shall endure.

There are many good and useful proposals for immigration, such as replacing family-oriented chain migration with a policy oriented more toward the economic needs and economic interests of the United States. President Trumps radical proposal would reduce immigration to levels not seen since...the 1980s, which is to say, to a few hundred thousand immigrants per year rather than the million or million-plus of recent years. A period of relatively low immigration might help in the projection of assimilation, which currently is producing mixed results. My own preference is for an economically oriented policy that, callous as it may sound, is approximately Cato for rich people and Krikorian for poor ones: Bring on the highly educated and affluent, the doctors and investors and entrepreneurs, and maybe take a pass on the 13 millionth day-laborer.

Thats a debate worth having. Indeed, the failures of Republican health-care and tax-reform efforts suggest very strongly that we need to have more of those debates in order to forge some kind of politically viable consensus behind conservative policy projects. But we do not have to do everything at once. Addressing illegal immigration is something we can do right now, something that Republicans and (most) Democrats can get behind and should get behind.

READ MORE: The Anomaly of American Immigration Time to End DACA On Immigration, Poetry Isnt Policy, but Poetry Matters

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent.

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Immigration: Stop Illegal Entry before Doing Anything Else | National ... - National Review

There was celebration in the air. Anxiety, too.

About 60 people who came to San Diego from Somalia refugees, immigrants, naturalized citizens gathered in a conference room in City Heights for their weekly meeting. Its an opportunity to work out problems, strengthen community bonds, share food. This time, Friday morning, they applauded those among them who had just completed a six-month program to learn how to read and write English.

And they worried.

Two days earlier, President Trump had endorsed a radical shift in the nations immigration policy. The bill would eventually cut in half the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country every year, currently more than 1 million, and it would take a decades-old system that favors family ties and turn it into one that is merit-based, giving preference to those with college degrees, job skills and the ability to speak English.

This legislation will not only restore our competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens, Trump said at the White House. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.

Almost immediately, critics on both sides of the political aisle found fault with the plan and gave it little chance of passage. They disputed the claims that low-skilled immigrants are taking jobs from Americans and driving down wages, and they said the new restrictions would hurt the economy by shrinking the number of foreign-born workers at a time when the native population is decreasing.

To the Somalis gathered in City Heights, the new proposal felt mostly like more of the same. Trump made immigration reform a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and since taking office in January hes moved to build a wall on the Mexican border, increase deportations, stem the influx of refugees and curtail visitors from certain Muslim-majority countries.

What hes telling us is were not welcome here, said Said Osman Abiyow, 34, president of the Somali Bantu Assn. of America, an aid organization he founded after arriving in 2003. This is not what America stands for around the world, where it has a great reputation as a place of freedom and peace.

Like many others in the room, Abiyow has relatives in Somalia he would like one day to bring to the United States. Now a U.S. citizen, hes hoping his sister can join him. But he said shes been caught up in the ban the administration put in place for newcomers from six predominantly Muslim countries (Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iran, Syria and Yemen). He doesnt know when she might be allowed to come.

If the proposed changes go through, maybe never.

There were 44.7 million immigrants living in the United States in 2015 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), which was 13.4% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. An estimated 11 million of those are believed to be here illegally. In San Diego County, Health and Human Services Agency figures show about 21.5% of the population is immigrants.

Under current policy, American citizens and permanent residents can sponsor spouses, minor children and parents for an unlimited number of green cards, and siblings and adult children for a limited number of visas. Thats how most lawful immigrants arrive here. In fiscal year 2015, for example, about 65% of the green cards went to relatives.

The new bill, sponsored by Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, would still allow the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents to come in, but it would end the preferences for siblings and adult children.

That left San Diego newcomer Rukiya Bare concerned during Fridays weekly meeting of the Somalis.

She came here with her husband and four children 10 months ago. But their 25-year-old daughter, Natesho, had to stay behind. Now shes trying to join the family and is currently in Saudi Arabia, Bare said. When her three-month visa there expires, shell have to leave the country or risk jail.

I worry about her all the time, Bare said through an interpreter. At night, during the day it hurts my heart, the stress of not having her with us.

Several of the Somalis said they came to the U.S. because of the immigration-policy emphasis on family unity. The Somalis are a tightknit group (there were 3,534 in the county in 2015) and family connections can be crucial to helping them survive in new surroundings, Abiyow said.

Sado Moh, 29, misses her mother. Moh arrived in San Diego four months ago after spending 10 years in a refugee camp and is hoping her mother, father and four siblings will be able to come, too. That was already uncertain because of the other immigration initiatives pursued by the Trump administration, she said, and the latest proposal seems to her the most threatening yet. It would cap the number of refugees admitted annually at 50,000, about half of what it has been.

I ran away from civil war and came here to build a new life, Moh said through an interpreter. But without my family, what I feel mostly is lonely. I want them to come here and have the same chance for a new life. Then I will be happy.

Lawful immigrants are more likely to be of working age (18 to 64) than native-born U.S. citizens, according to Pew 76% compared with 60%.

The occupation with the largest percentage of immigrant workers, about 20%, is farming, fishing and forestry. Many of those workers are drawn to San Diego County, which has more than 5,700 small family farms (most of them less than 10 acres). Nationwide, the county is first in avocado and nursery-crop production; third in honey production; fifth in lemons; and ninth in strawberries.

About 11,000 people are employed as farmworkers in the county, and most are immigrants a mixture of people who are here both legally and illegally.

Under the new immigration legislation, preference for green cards would be determined by a point system for attributes like education, English-language ability, high-paying job offers, entrepreneurial initiative and achievements (such as a Nobel Prize). Although that would seem to suggest limited opportunities for farmworkers, supporters of the bill said it will help bring up wages, perhaps making the jobs more attractive to native-born workers.

Wilkens writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Proposal to limit legal immigration ripples through Somali families in San Diego - Los Angeles Times

GREENSBORO Hundreds of people marched through downtown Saturday in support of immigration reform.

Betsy OConnor, who was meeting a friend for lunch downtown when the wave of protesters marched by, said immigration reform is needed in the United States.

This is supposed to be the land of the free but here lately, things have been pretty bad, said OConnor, 61, of High Point. I hope our politicians can get it together and stop separating people in the country.

FaithAction International House held the fifth annual Downtown Unity Walk for Immigration Reform to draw attention to issues surrounding immigration.

Melanie Rodenbough, a board member with FaithAction International, said the group wants to bring the community together and include those who are immigrants. She said Saturdays march had a great turnout that included several immigrants.

Rodenbough said FaithAction focuses on supporting immigrants, educating businesses and companies on immigration issues and connecting immigrants to community resources.

She said the immigrant community needs lawmakers to pass a comprehensive immigration bill that would protect young people without a criminal history to a pathway to citizenship.

Lisa Hitch with Indivisible High Point, a progressive political group, said families are being torn apart because of immigration laws in the United States.

Not that immigration laws in the country were better before, she said, but its gotten worse because of the current administration.

President Donald Trump has made good on campaign promises to crack down on immigration, both legal and illegal. He plans to cut legal immigration in half and has introduced legislation that eliminates preferences given to extended family members and adult children of U.S. citizens seeking green cards, according to the New York Times. Hes requested more immigration officers and signed an executive order authorizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to widen the net of illegal immigrants to deport to include anyone, not just those with serious criminal records.

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arrests are up nearly 40 percent since January, with an average of 400 arrests across the country every day.

Late last month, a group gathered in Greensboro to denounce the rising numbers of ICE arrests of people without criminal records.

And two Greensboro churches are offering sanctuary to immigrants who illegally entered the country years ago. Both women were annually checking in with ICE and getting stays on deportation orders until this year.

Juana Luz Tobar Ortega, an Asheboro grandmother who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, has been living at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church since May 31.

She is thought to be the first North Carolina resident to seek sanctuary from immigration officials at a church.

Minerva Cisneros Garcia, who has lived in Winston-Salem for 17 years, and two of her three sons moved into Congregational United Church of Christ on June 28.

Greensboro resident Michael Wildman, who attended Saturdays march with his wife and two young children, said immigration is a moral issue and voters need to elect better officials who understand that.

Im a person of faith, Wildman said. We have to welcome others.

OConnor was impressed by the number of people participating in the march. She said she hopes politicians pay attention to the unrest over certain laws and bills and make some changes.

Its sad that we have to protest to draw attention to issues that should be commonsense, OConnor said. The great part about this country is we can voice our opinions to force change.

Contact Andre Taylor at 336-373-3465 and follow @andretaylorNR on Twitter.

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Hundreds march through downtown Greensboro for immigration ... - Winston-Salem Journal