Immigration Bill

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am an immigrant and I remember being shocked at what kind of people in the waiting room at the uS embassy were getttong green cards. Like the most backward looking. Meanwhile i was rejected for a tourist visa though I had no intention whatsoever of staying.

I happened to win a green card lottery so eventually I came in. But I never would have otherwise.

As a liberal, when you bring this up - the Latino groups hammer you.

They are fully against Australian/Canadian type systems.

We should be bringing in more Japanese, Koreans, Jews, high IQ northwest Europeans.

Not the dregs

You realize that there is far more variation in iQ within races than between them.

Wait of course you don't, which proves the point.

I am the immigrant above and this all happened within the same race. Basically poor probably illiterate villagers were getting green cards while educated people knew they had no chance. I was only looking for a tourist visa and still didn't get it. American embassies are so arrogant and stupid.

If you were intelligent, you would understand why we should not choose people based on countries you think are high iQ.

i am profoundly gifted thx. i didn't say the people should be chosen based on country of origin. and that's not in the bill either, as i understand it.

i am merely providing my perspective from the other side. every smart, educated person who wanted to immigrate (which i didn't) went to canada embassy. those who were rejected there went to australia and NZ. nobody even tried to get a green card for the US because that was impossible if you had no family connections (no matter how remote) in the US. some smart people still managed to stay in the US mostly by going to phd programs and then getting jobs/getting employer sponsorship. but basically there was no route to legally immigrate.

I think this brings up a really good point: why are we allowing immigration via family connections? It's pretty absurd to let a person and his entire family immigrate simply because they already have one sibling in the United States who sponsors them. It's a completely illogical way of running an immigration system.

I'm on board with moving to a point system for individuals with good educations, technical skills, or badly needed language abilities. I'm also totally open to allowing more refugees or those facing persecution (religious, gender, LBGT, etc).

But the family-based system is nuts. No way in hell is one brother already in the US able to support all his siblings, their kids, and parents.

Frisco TX and Ashburn VA, have turned into Bangalore with family immigration.

And their economies are thriving! Winning!

[Anonymous]

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As a liberal, when you bring this up - the Latino groups hammer you.

They are fully against Australian/Canadian type systems.

We should be bringing in more Japanese, Koreans, Jews, high IQ northwest Europeans.

Not the dregs

Why would any of these folks who aren't already here, want to come?

What happened to

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

That's nice you can quote the engraving on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

It fails to explain why our current economy would benefits from more waves of illiterate, impoverished, unskilled teens from primarily 3 countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras - like the waves encouraged under Obama.

+1. That quote was from a time that America desperately needed workers, including children, to slave away in manufacturing. In case you haven't noticed, we no longer have a lot of manufacturing jobs. Also, the immigrants of that time were required to pass certain IQ tests and provide proof that they would be able to support themselves. Others were held in quarantine for health reasons. Do some reading PP instead of relying on your precious quote.

Your ancestors would be disgusted by you deriding that "precious quote." If you don't like American ideals there are plenty of other countries around the world to go live in.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am a liberal Democrat who is the daughter of immigrants and I agree with Cotton, Perdue, et al. on this issue. We should severely curtail low-skilled immigration and reserve those spaces for the best and brightest immigrants (obviously without discriminating based on country of origin.) I think the current system, where people can sponsor their siblings and extended family, who then theoretically get priority over high-skilled immigrants, is nuts. The Canadian and Australian systems are great models. I fail to see what's un-American or racist about this, unless it discriminates based on race/ethnicity/country, which I don't believe it does.

Exactly. There is nothing un-American or racist or xenophobic about this, though there are some who *love* to pretend otherwise. They're like a broken record that I honestly tune out these days.

+1,000,000

nothing racist in wanting to keep your job.

I would rather hire my neighbors child than some child from Bangalore. Why is that racist in democrat's eyes??

[Anonymous]

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I am a liberal Democrat who is the daughter of immigrants and I agree with Cotton, Perdue, et al. on this issue. We should severely curtail low-skilled immigration and reserve those spaces for the best and brightest immigrants (obviously without discriminating based on country of origin.) I think the current system, where people can sponsor their siblings and extended family, who then theoretically get priority over high-skilled immigrants, is nuts. The Canadian and Australian systems are great models. I fail to see what's un-American or racist about this unless it discriminates based on race/ethnicity/country, which I don't believe it does.

+1000000

I am a progressive and an immigrant and I support this bill. We should have a merit based immigration system.. get the best and brightest from the world.

Most non-native Americans would not be here today if this bill was in place when their ancestors came over.

This is a complete rejection of American ideals that have stood for several centuries.

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights & previleges, if by decency & propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment. -- George Washington, 1783

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-12127

You do realize it is no longer 1783, right? Good grief.

Oh, I see. So we only revere the founding fathers when it is convenient now.

Guess we don't need the 2nd ammendment anymore!

Exactly! Times change. Let's get rid of that one.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am an immigrant and I remember being shocked at what kind of people in the waiting room at the uS embassy were getttong green cards. Like the most backward looking. Meanwhile i was rejected for a tourist visa though I had no intention whatsoever of staying.

I happened to win a green card lottery so eventually I came in. But I never would have otherwise.

As a liberal, when you bring this up - the Latino groups hammer you.

They are fully against Australian/Canadian type systems.

We should be bringing in more Japanese, Koreans, Jews, high IQ northwest Europeans.

Not the dregs

You realize that there is far more variation in iQ within races than between them.

Wait of course you don't, which proves the point.

I am the immigrant above and this all happened within the same race. Basically poor probably illiterate villagers were getting green cards while educated people knew they had no chance. I was only looking for a tourist visa and still didn't get it. American embassies are so arrogant and stupid.

If you were intelligent, you would understand why we should not choose people based on countries you think are high iQ.

i am profoundly gifted thx. i didn't say the people should be chosen based on country of origin. and that's not in the bill either, as i understand it.

i am merely providing my perspective from the other side. every smart, educated person who wanted to immigrate (which i didn't) went to canada embassy. those who were rejected there went to australia and NZ. nobody even tried to get a green card for the US because that was impossible if you had no family connections (no matter how remote) in the US. some smart people still managed to stay in the US mostly by going to phd programs and then getting jobs/getting employer sponsorship. but basically there was no route to legally immigrate.

I think this brings up a really good point: why are we allowing immigration via family connections? It's pretty absurd to let a person and his entire family immigrate simply because they already have one sibling in the United States who sponsors them. It's a completely illogical way of running an immigration system.

I'm on board with moving to a point system for individuals with good educations, technical skills, or badly needed language abilities. I'm also totally open to allowing more refugees or those facing persecution (religious, gender, LBGT, etc).

But the family-based system is nuts. No way in hell is one brother already in the US able to support all his siblings, their kids, and parents.

Frisco TX and Ashburn VA, have turned into Bangalore with family immigration.

And their economies are thriving! Winning!

And they would have been thriving even if Infosys did not hire cheap workers, but they would have been thiving with local US citizens. Just like it worked in the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's before the plague of H1B/H4/F1/OPT/L1 affected the IT world in US economy.

win win for eveyone. US gets to have more low skilled workers working. India gets to keep their college graduates to build their own economy.

[Anonymous]

Amazing that we have a 1990 immigration bill that has been warped from it's original intentions, from bringing in high skilled labor, to boosting profits for MNC by importing cheap software testers, and yet when workers try to get it changed, business ERUPTS in proclamations that we have to continue bringing in low skilled labor.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It's nice to know that America will have a policy similar to the one that turned away 900 Jews who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 on the MS St. Louis, #MAGA

so for how many millennia do we need to accept every single person because we turned them way? btw, weren't they highly educated or something? or are we supposed to give preference to those who have uncle's uncle in the US, the way we do now?

Do not talk what you have no clue about. That tells badly about your intelligence and maybe you deserve to be deported replaced by some smart immigrant.

The immigration policy provides options for parents and siblings of US permanent residents or citizens to immigrate not uncle or uncle's uncle. You need to be permanent resident or citizen to even apply for them NOT just a mere visa holder.

Riiight. Except that a person brings a sibling who brings a spouse who brings a sibling so pretty quickly we have uncles uncle.

Except the waiting period even to get a sibling runs into decades. So your theory of chain migration letting people into this country to the tune of millions is possible if humans live for 200 years.

that is not true. it says in the documents/website it will take 20 years to bring ina sibling on reality it moves faster. not sure why, or maybe those people bring sibling illegally and merely start the paperwork.

You need to be a US citizen to apply for your siblings. You also need to wait 5 years to get citizenship after green card. Uncle's uncle is not coming in 50 years.

uncle's uncle will be here immediately and file his paperwork. my nanny brought half of her village to DC.

You can't file paperwork immediately as a green card holder other than your spouse or minor children. And the wait time is long.

right. but they can come here illegally and then become legal over time.

That's a totally different issue.

I have no idea why Steve Bannon/Miller picked LEGAL immigration issue as the first immigration bill to bring up.

because it's important and most people support merit system.

We already have merit system for people don't have family connections here. I thought ILLEGAL immigration was the most pressing problem. I guess not.

So cut the quota in half is going to magically attract the best and brightest to this country?

illegal immigration is a separate problem. you can walk and chew gum at the same time, you know.

foreigners and even americans have no clue what current immigration levels are. 500k or a million means nothing to them.

having a point system will attract some number of best and brightest to this country. but it is true, best and brightest as not gonna be coming to the US in great numbers. that has nothing to do with immigration law but with globalization. life at other places with good human capital is not bad anymore, in fact sometimes it's better than in the US with its insane real estate and childcare prices. that's all the more reason to strongly prioritize talented and educated. otherwise only people from the worlds' worst places will be coming.

Illegal immigration is part of the same problem! If you make it impossible for people to come legally, guess what, they have nothing to lose and come illegally.

We have a merit based system that already exists and works in parallel with the family-based system. And guess what? The employment based system is far less subscribed than the family-based system. The visa waiting time for skilled and professional workers is non-existent or far less than the family wait times, depending on category.

We have more Spanish speakers in the US than they have in Spain, so Spanish should get points too, just like French does in Canada.

This announcement was just a political stunt to distract by the White House. This bill has been getting zero traction in the Senate.

1) employer based system is not a merit based system

2) that we have so many spanish speakers is a problem, not a virtue. people who speak spanish only should be getting negate points

3) the bill is not making it impossible to come to the country legally. even even if it did, illegal immigration should be zero. that's a matter of enforcement, not laws.

I was in a small store this weekend, and a woman there spoke only Spanish and was livid that the shop had no Spanish-speaking staff. She stormed out in a huff. I've never gone to a foreign country and insisted that the staff know English!

Your Spanish must be pretty good if you understood all that.

Not really. It's easy to figure it out when a woman is angrily saying, "blah, blah, blah, ESPANOL!.....blah, blah, blah," the clerk is saying, "sorry, no Espanol", and the woman gets red in the face and yells, "blah, blah, blah, no Espanol!?.....blah, blah, blah" and then storms out the door.

But it is funny how you make a snide (and wrong) observation about me and say nothing about a woman in America who expects people to converse with her in her native language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

uncle's uncle will be here immediately and file his paperwork. my nanny brought half of her village to DC.

I have neighbors who have quite a chain going--remember, the chain expands geometrically. You bring mother and father-in-law and then you have two sets of sibling coming......

And, I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere today that family members make up the largest portion of new green cards.

Currently, two-thirds of the million-plus foreign citizens who get green cards (i.e., permanent residence that can lead to citizenship) each year qualify only because they have relatives already here.


Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) have introduced a new version of the RAISE Act that would eliminate chain migration and the visa lottery, cap annual refugee admissions, and replace the employment-based green card system with a new merit-based immigration system.

The Barbara Jordan Commission, the last bipartisan Congressional commission on immigration, recommended the elimination of chain migration and the visa lottery and promoted a green card system that served the national interest and the interest of American workers. The Cotton/Perdue RAISE Act would achieve those recommendations!

According to Sens. Cotton and Perdue, the RAISE Act would:

- replace the current permanent employment-visa framework with a skills-based points system, akin to the systems used by Canada and Australia;

- keep immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. residents, encouraging the unification of nuclear families;

- eliminate preferences for extended family and grown adult family members of U.S. residents;

- create a renewable temporary visa for parents of U.S. citizens for care taking purposes;

- eliminate the outdated visa lottery; and

- limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average.

The RAISE Act would reduce overall legal immigration by 50% from its current level of more than 1 million per year within 10 years of enactment.

Please send a message to your U.S. Senators urging them to support Sens. Cotton's and Perdue's RAISE Act!

[Anonymous]

I think this is great. Shifts the competition from blue collar workers to white collar workers. Time for them to suffer like everyone else!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is great. Shifts the competition from blue collar workers to white collar workers. Time for them to suffer like everyone else!

I'm for it also, but not because it's time for white collar workers "to suffer." (What's your problem?) I'm for it because we have room in this country for educated, self-supporting individuals. That is whom we should be admitting.

[Anonymous]

Wonder how Trump is going to get his next wife if this passes

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My family and I came from Russia in 1994. Neither of my parents had money or education and spoke very little English. I was in grade school and my brother and I started school without knowing a word of English. We stayed in a two bedroom apartment with another Russian family. I remember being hungry a lot. Both of my parents worked two jobs - sometimes dropping my brother and I off at the library because they couldn't afford a sitter.

My father now own a company that employs 12 Americans and gives them benefits. My mother is a preschool teacher. I am a pediatrician and my brother is in medical school now.

We are the family this bill would turn away.

Similar story for me. Many of the uneducated immigrants start small businesses. I am in NY right now, grew up in LA and lived in sf. In all those places I see low skilled immigrants starting small businesses.

Taking advantage of relatives by paying them slave wages.

And? They still work very hard. That is the american way. Unlike trump, they started with nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Illegal immigration is part of the same problem! If you make it impossible for people to come legally, guess what, they have nothing to lose and come illegally.

We have a merit based system that already exists and works in parallel with the family-based system. And guess what? The employment based system is far less subscribed than the family-based system. The visa waiting time for skilled and professional workers is non-existent or far less than the family wait times, depending on category.

We have more Spanish speakers in the US than they have in Spain, so Spanish should get points too, just like French does in Canada.

This announcement was just a political stunt to distract by the White House. This bill has been getting zero traction in the Senate.

First, you don't HAVE to make it possible for everyone to come legally. Immigration is not an entitlement. A country is entitled to lay out its own expectations as to who it does and does not want in.

Second, please stop perpetuating lies. We do NOT have a merit-based immigration system that's not dependent on the whim of the employer. Currently the only merit-based immigration category is reserved for individuals of "outstanding accomplishment", and the bar is set impossibly high. If you are an Olympic champion or bestselling author, you will clear it. If not, not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The employer based system is very much a merit-based system. Let's look at EB-2:

"You must be able to show exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business. Exceptional ability “means a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered in the sciences, arts, or business.”

Spanish is very much part of this country. It's not a negative. The #1 song in the US is in Spanish. With 50M speakers it's a second language now. If you don't think so, visit Miami.

The bill would indeed make it impossible for many people to come to the country, the same way Canada's system does. It depends on the profile of points the government says you have.

Stop lying. Exceptional ability is by definition very rare, and immigration policy cannot be based on "exceptional people" - by default, these are in the single digits for most fields. How many people immigrate under this category per year? Do you know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

uncle's uncle will be here immediately and file his paperwork. my nanny brought half of her village to DC.

I have neighbors who have quite a chain going--remember, the chain expands geometrically. You bring mother and father-in-law and then you have two sets of sibling coming......

And, I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere today that family members make up the largest portion of new green cards.

Currently, two-thirds of the million-plus foreign citizens who get green cards (i.e., permanent residence that can lead to citizenship) each year qualify only because they have relatives already here.


Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) have introduced a new version of the RAISE Act that would eliminate chain migration and the visa lottery, cap annual refugee admissions, and replace the employment-based green card system with a new merit-based immigration system.

The Barbara Jordan Commission, the last bipartisan Congressional commission on immigration, recommended the elimination of chain migration and the visa lottery and promoted a green card system that served the national interest and the interest of American workers. The Cotton/Perdue RAISE Act would achieve those recommendations!

According to Sens. Cotton and Perdue, the RAISE Act would:

- replace the current permanent employment-visa framework with a skills-based points system, akin to the systems used by Canada and Australia;

- keep immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. residents, encouraging the unification of nuclear families;

- eliminate preferences for extended family and grown adult family members of U.S. residents;

- create a renewable temporary visa for parents of U.S. citizens for care taking purposes;

- eliminate the outdated visa lottery; and

- limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average.

The RAISE Act would reduce overall legal immigration by 50% from its current level of more than 1 million per year within 10 years of enactment.

Please send a message to your U.S. Senators urging them to support Sens. Cotton's and Perdue's RAISE Act!

I despise Cotton but I can get behind this wholeheartedly.