This morning at the White House in front of the national press corps, President Trump endorsed the new RAISE Act that would reduce overall legal immigration by 50% and put employment-based green cards on a skills-based points system.
Here is the official statement that Roy Beck, NumbersUSA President issued to the press:
The RAISE Act introduced today by Senators Cotton and Perdue will do more than any other action to fulfill President Trump's promises as a candidate to create an immigration system that puts the interests of American workers first.
Our recent polling confirms that American voters overwhelmingly want far less immigration because they know mass immigration creates unfair competition for American workers.
Seeing the President standing with the bill's sponsors at the White House gives hope to the tens of millions of struggling Americans in stagnant jobs or outside the labor market altogether. NumbersUSA stands with these Americans in wholeheartedly endorsing the RAISE Act.
-- NumbersUSA President & Founder Roy Beck
The new RAISE Act is similar to the version introduced by Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia except that it adds an extra element. It replaces the current employment-based green card system that sets aside 140,000 green cards for new foreign workers, including 10,000 for unskilled workers, and replaces it with a new merit-based points system that awards green cards to only the most skilled foreign workers who have a job offer from employers with salaries that are at least 1.5x the state's median salary.
The new RAISE Act would:
- 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- Eliminate the outdated visa lottery
- Limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average
- Replace the current permanent employment-visa framework with a skills-based points system, akin to the systems used by Canada and Australia
You can find out more about the RAISE Act from the resources below:
TOP-LINE PRIMER: OBJECTIVES OF THE RAISE ACT
AMERICANS DECISIVELY SUPPORT THE ELEMENTS OF THE RAISE ACT
ONE PAGER ON NEW RAISE ACT
OUTSIDE SUPPORTERS OF THE NEW RAISE ACT
