We've added a third chalkboard ad to our campaign to educate the American people, the media and public officials about Chain Migration.
Most people reporting on the Chain Migration issue lack the background for understanding it. They tend to treat the attempt to end that immigration category as something new, something maybe fringe, something intensely partisan or even extreme.
The ad notes that the movement to end Chain Migration is at least as old as the 1990s when a bi-partisan commission -- appointed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress -- recommended ending Chain Migration.
The ad also puts to rest the common media claim that the reductions in total immigration that might result from ending Chain Migration would be somehow a violation of our immigration tradition.
In the 1980s, immigration was averaging around 600,000 (as a result of the 1965 act).
Unfortunately, ending Chain Migration alone would not get us back to even that very high figure. But it would move us well in that direction.
The ad shows that Congress in 1990 created a gigantic bump in the immigration flow to an average of around one million. But Congress in that same 1990 bill wisely created the bi-partisan commission to study whether such a bump was good for Americans. The commission found that it was not. As a result, it recommended ending Chain Migration.
The chair of that commission was the civil rights icon Barbara Jordan who had been appointed by President Bill Clinton.
So, the move to cut immigration by eliminating Chain Migration is most decidedly not a fringe or partisan effort. Nor is it extreme since it would only reduce annual immigration part way back to where it had been in the 1980s (which was double what it had been in the 1960s).
Here are the other two ads in our Chain Migration chalkboard campaign.
Thanks to everybody who have been circulating these ads to millions of people through email, Facebook and Twitter.
-- ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
