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The dramatic rapprochement with Communist China occurred under Richard Nixon's administration and was successful largely due to the former strident anti-communist stand taken by that administration. Congress was won over in part by the Nixon Administration given their strong anti-communist credentials and thus strong credentials with the Republican hawks in Congress.

Likewise, the Regan Administration was successful with its rapprochement with the Communist Soviet Union, in part for the same reasons and was successful in their negotiations with Gorbachev in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

President Donald Trump, with his bombastic and strident anti-immigrant stance toward our nation's former immigration policies, appears similarly well positioned to advance a long stalled comprehensive immigration reform bill aimed at dealing with the estimated 11-plus million undocumented immigrants living amongst us in our nation. He has obviously established his creds with the hawks on immigration policy and as such would appear to be the most likely to succeed with advancing a resolution to this long simmering and polarizing immigration stalemate that has paralyzed the lives of most of these undocumented immigrants and their families.

The absence of a comprehensive immigration reform policy has likewise created severe uncertainty among the wide array of businesses that employ large numbers of undocumented immigrants such as our construction industry, our wide ranging agriculture industry and service industries. We all can agree that the current system is broken, but now appears to be the best time for advancing a resolution that could pass both branches of Congress, if not too draconian. It would be encouraging if our two local congressmen, Morgan Griffith and Bob Goodlatte could get behind such a timely effort.

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Lemmon: Time for comprehensive immigration reform? - Roanoke Times

Over President Donald Trump's first 100 days, we're asking him questions that our audience wants answers to. Join the project by tweeting this question to @realDonaldTrump with the hashtag #100Days100Qs.

#68. @realDonaldTrump, is immigration reform on your legislative agenda? #100Days100Qs

It was clear through the campaign and in the first weeks of Donald Trump's presidency that a major priority of the administration would be to enforce existing immigration laws to remove undocumented immigrants from the US.

But we know it's not just illegal immigration on the Trump administration's policy plate. In his address to Congress at the end of February, Trump talked about changing how legal immigration works. What's less clear is what reform to the immigration system might look like, and how much of a priority it is for the White House.

Most immigrants are admitted to the US as permanent residents on the basis of family unification. The Migration Policy Institute reportsthat in 2015, of more than1 million new permanent residents, also known as green-card holders, over 60 percent came to the US after being sponsored by family members, mostly immediate family. The US caps the number of immigrants who can enter the countrythis way based on national origin.

Trump has, instead, called for a system of immigration that focuses on high-skilled workers.

"Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits: It will save countless dollars, raise workers wages, and help struggling families including immigrant families enter the middle class," Trump said. "I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nations security, and to restore respect for our laws."

A March CNN/ORC poll found that two-thirds of Americans support some form of legalization for undocumented immigrants who have jobs. An even higher percentage support a pathway for people who have jobs, speak English and pay all their taxes. (Here's a PDF of the poll's findings.)

Comprehensive immigration reform was attempted by the Bush administration and several times during the Obama administration, including a bipartisan effort that passed the Senate in 2013 but never received a vote in the House. That bill, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013," proposed to add border agents and require all employers to verify their employees' authorization to work, while creating a talent-based immigration system and a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants.

The US Conference of Mayors, representingover 1,400 cities, adopted a resolution in January "calling on Congress to fix our broken immigration system and immediately begin working toward the enactment of comprehensive immigration reform legislation." (PDF)

Many employersalso say they need reformin order to fill open positions with people who are legally authorized to work in the US. This was the position of fast food CEO Andrew Puzder, Trump's first pick for labor secretary who removed himself from consideration amidst scandal.

Senators David Perdue and Tom Cotton told Politicothat the president supported their bill to reduce the numbers of legal immigrants admitted to the country. He asked, they said, for a broader bill to include changes to work visas.

We would like to know if the White House can confirm this report. And, more generally, our question for Trump is: Is immigration reform among your legislative priorities and what are some of the specific changes that you would like to see happen? Click here to tweet this question to the president. Here are some other immigration-related questions we've asked.

#41. @realDonaldTrump How will you handle cases of abuse at privately run prisons and immigration detention centers? #100Days100Qs

#39. @realDonaldTrump Do you see a correlation between your immigration policies and a rise in hate crimes? #100Days100Qs

#19. @realDonaldTrump: You plan to hire 10,000 more immigration officers. Are you also expanding immigration courts? #100Days100Qs

#7. @realdonaldtrump: In addition to undocumented immigrants, are you prioritizing deportation of lawful US residents? #100Days100Qs

#4. @realDonaldTrump: As you increase immigration enforcement, will you make public information about detention & deportation? #100Days100Qs

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President Trump, is immigration reform on your legislative agenda? - PRI

Outlining his position on immigration in August of last year, Donald Trump, then the Republican candidate for U.S. president, made his motivating philosophy clear: There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people. Although this nationalistic appeal may strike some readers as conservative, it is very similar to the position taken by U.S. civil rights icon and Democrat Barbara Jordan, who before her death in 1996 headed President Bill Clintons commission on immigration reform. It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society, she argued, to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest. Trumps rhetoric has of course been overheated and insensitive at times, but his view on immigrationthat it should be designed to benefit the receiving countryis widely held.

In the United States, there is strong evidence that the national interest has not been well served by the countrys immigration policy over the last five decades. Even as levels of immigration have approached historic highs, debate on the topic has been subdued, and policymakers and opinion leaders in both parties have tended to overstate the benefits and understate or ignore the costs of immigration. It would make a great deal of sense for the country to reform its immigration policies by more vigorously enforcing existing laws, and by moving away from the current system, which primarily admits immigrants based on family relationships, toward one based on the interests of Americans.

IMMIGRANT NATION

Trump did not create the strong dissatisfaction with immigration felt by his working-class supporters, but he certainly harnessed it. Voters sense that he would restrict immigration may be the single most important factor that helped him win the longtime Democratic stronghold of the industrial Midwest, and thus the presidency. There are two primary reasons why immigration has become so controversial, and why Trumps message resonated. The first is lax enforcement and the subsequently large population

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The Case Against Immigration - Foreign Affairs

Immigration reform is an issue that Washington cant seem to address. Few disagree on beefing up security at the nations borders. But politicians part ways when discussing how to handle the countrys 11 million undocumented workers, who have either overstayed their visas or entered without permission. The resulting gridlock has left them in limbo for decades.

For the Left, the solution is to create a path to citizenship. Many arguments are made to support it. Undocumented workers pay their taxes, though in many cases because it may help them gain legal status. And undocumented workers have been here a long time without ever having had a legal right to establish permanent residence, but set that fact aside for the moment. The weakest rationale for granting them a path to citizenship is this: that they have toiled hard on American soil, contributing to the national economy.They have, but they have done so by violating the nations immigration laws. The end doesnt justify the means.

So whats the solution?

Government could get tough on those who hire undocumented workers. Stiffer penalties would mean fewer jobprospects for the job seekers. And studies show there there is a net outflow of workers when available jobs are scarce. But businesses want migrant labor, and immigration enforcement has long been overlooked to make sure they get it. Many rightly note that parked on Americas doorstep is a sign that reads Keep Out on one side and, on the other, Help Wanted.

This hypocrisy has augmented the problem of mixed-status families: cases in which some family members most notably, children have the legal right to be here while others do not. Nearly 5 million American kids have at least one undocumented parent. Confronting that reality means accepting that forced deportations, long touted as a solution, are socially unviable. They are also fiscally irresponsible. One estimate pegs the cost of deporting 11 million people at over $400 billion.

A more pragmatic solution would be to offer a path to legalization that stops short of citizenship. That would meet the humanitarian imperative to keep families together. But it would also hold those who have violated immigration laws accountable for their actions. This would apply only to undocumented workers who were of legal age when they entered the United States; those who were not of legal age should be given a citizenship path identical to the one that is available to legal immigrants.

Except for those who were born on American soil, citizenship is not a right. Its a privilege. A path short of citizenship sends a powerful message to Americas legal-immigrant community, whose members have worked tirelessly to follow existing immigration guidelines. There is a rule of law, and citizenship is granted to those who follow it.

A path short of citizenship would assuage Republican concerns that immigration reform would hurt the GOP. Many undocumented workers hail from Latin America, and Latinos have long favored Democrats over Republicans. Some Republicans worry that granting these workers a path to citizenship would tip the future balance of political power. That may sound petty, and it is. But it is also a political reality.

Withholding citizenship, the Left will argue, creates a working class who will never truly feel that America is their home. Citizenship, they maintain, holds the key to becoming a full and open member of American society. Yet a significant number of legal immigrants who can naturalize dont. They have pursued an education, own homes, and have forged links in American society. Not being citizens hasnt stopped them from claiming their piece of the American dream. Why would it be any different for undocumented workers?

The fact that not all legal immigrants claim American citizenship challenges another liberal argument: that citizenship increases wages. Many advocates of a path to citizenship tout studies that show that when immigrants naturalize, earnings increase by as much as 25 percent, according to one account. If that were true, wouldnt all eligible immigrants line up for American passports? Wage increases, after all, would be a powerful a powerful incentive.

The reality is that evidence linking citizenship to wage increases is weak. Researchers often mix legal noncitizens with undocumented workers when looking at earnings an approach that skews results in favor of the liberal position. More important, many studies dont control for occupational choice. The salaries of physicians who are American citizens will always be higher than those of secretaries who are legal noncitizens. Nationality has little to do with it. Choice of profession does.

Citizenship can improve wages by offering access to jobs previously off limits. These include high-paying public- and private-sector positions that require security clearances. But they also require advanced education and skills training. As a whole, undocumented workers, nearly half of whom havent graduated high school, are ill equipped for such employment. And suggestions that immigrants tend to pursue higher education as a consequence of enjoying citizenship are not backed up by hard data.

One thing is certain. The needs of Americas changing economy cannot be met by laws that havent been touched in 25 years. Overhauling the nations immigration system requires a dose of pragmatism. And the current occupant of the White House, as unconventional as he may seem, mightjust be the one to deliver.

Ashley Nunes writes on work-force productivity, regulatory policy, and behavioral economics.

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A Path to Legal Status but Not Citizenship - National Review

Last Novembers election brought significant changes to Washington, DC. President Trump is not your typical politician. Some of his actions have generated controversy, particularly in the Bay Area. But one thing is beyond dispute: he is focused like a laser on creating and keeping jobs here in the United States.

Unfortunately, employers today often face a shortage of qualified workers. Many positions require specific skills that involve years of advanced technical and scientific training. This problem is particularly acute in the tech sector, where employers need workers with intricate knowledge of computer science and engineering.

For years, weve had a process for bringing high-skilled workers from other countries to the United States to fill jobs for which there is a shortage of American labor. This system does not replace American jobs; rather, it supplements our workforce with talent from other countries in industries where there are simply not enough qualified American workers to meet market demand.

But the system is out-of-date. Our immigration laws cap the number of high-skilled worker visasalso called H-1B visasthat employers may obtain each year at a number that is far below demand.

Our laws also lack a straightforward path for companies to hire foreign students at American universities on a permanent basis after graduation. We educate some of the worlds best and brightest here in America and then send them back home because they cant get permanent work in the U.S. This makes no sense.

At the same time, a handful of companies have found ways to game the H-1B system to displace American employees with lower-paid foreign workers. That was never the intent of our immigration laws, and it must not be allowed to continue.

For the past two Congresses, Ive championed legislation to bring our outmoded high-skilled immigration system into the 21stCentury. My bill, theImmigration Innovation Actor I-Squared, would make it easier for employers to find the high-skilled workers they need to grow their companies and create new jobs.

Im working on updating I-Squared for the new Congress and plan to reintroduce it in the coming weeks.

Among other things, the updated bill will contain a streamlined green card process for high-skilled workers and strict penalties for companies that use H-1B workers to displace American employees. It will also create a better procedure for H-1B workers who wish to stay in the United States long-term to change jobs so that employers cannot lock them in at below-market wages.

I know that many in Silicon Valley and surrounding communities have expressed concerns about the new administrations immigration policies. But I believe high-skilled immigration is an area where the tech community and the administration can work together. President Trump comes to office with a business background and recognizes the crucial need for qualified workers.

As a longtime proponent of the tech community and as the Chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, I can serve as a bridge between the President and Silicon Valley. I have a good working relationship with the president and a deep understanding of the issues that matter to the tech industry.

With a new and improved I-Squared as our guide, Im convinced we can enact meaningful high-skilled immigration reform so that employers can hire the employees they need to grow our economy and create even more high-paying jobs.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)is the chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force and the former chairman and longest-serving member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He wrote this for The Mercury News.

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Orrin Hatch: I can be a bridge for H-1B visa reforms - The Mercury News