Dinesh Kamath's Ediitorial 'Trump calls for a crackdown on legal immigration' that was published in Newsband

Trump calls for a crackdown on legal immigration

Many people in the U.S. now face the possibility of losing their jobs. They include Indian nationals too. It is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s decision on September 5 to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. Trump is trying to crack down on all forms of undocumented immigration. Policies of Trump are increasingly targeting immigrant people in every way. This decision is in addition to other rules that make lives of common people with meagre livelihood more difficult in continuing their stay in the US.

US president Donald Trump and the Republican party have made it a priority to scale back the H-1B and so-called “startup visa” programs in their push for an “America First” policy. Both programs have been put on notice for reform or effective elimination. On Aug. 2, Trump endorsed a proposal (paywall) to cut legal immigration in half within a decade and prevent American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country in favor of a merit-based system based on skills, education and language.

Trump pursues policies shutting the door to more immigrants to the US. US tech companies on the Hired platform are interviewing less foreign candidates.  Is there really a shortage of skilled engineers and scientists in the US? The United States must mint 1 million more STEM professionals during the next decade to maintain the country’s edge in science and technology, reported the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2016. That implies churning out 34% more graduates in fields like mathematics, engineering, science and other fields.

Making up the difference, argue immigration advocates, means hiring the best from around the world. Indiscriminately cutting off the flow of talent to the US, rather than selectively reforming the system, could backfire by depressing economic growth and starving companies of talent to compete globally. Foreigners have founded more than half of America’s private start-ups valued at $1 billion dollars or more, according to a report by the National Foundation for American Policy (pdf), a non-partisan think tank.

Sixty percent of US-based technology workers Hired surveyed on its platform expect the Trump administration to harm the tech industry. President Donald Trump muses about taking on legal immigration. Shortly after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order  banned refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Currently about 1 million legal immigrants enter the U.S. each year, but if the bill, which is set to be introduced later this summer, is enacted, that number will be 500,000 by 2027.

Trump called for a crackdown on legal immigration as well. In addition to reducing the overall number of immigrants entering the country, the legislation being drafted would shift the U.S. immigration system from favoring family unification to admitting people based on “merit, skill, and proficiency,” as Trump once put it. Restriction will be part of the upcoming reorganization of the immigration system. “In order to be eligible for citizenship, you’ll have to demonstrate you are self-sufficient and you don’t receive welfare,” the senior administration official said. “You’re going to reduce low-skilled immigration substantially, which will protect American workers and recent immigrants themselves.”

Being more deliberate about who is let into the country will raise working-class wages, which is why an overwhelming majority of Americans support it. Instead of undercutting American workers, it will support them and their livelihoods.

A comprehensive report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that over the past few decades, immigrants (both legal and illegal) have helped the U.S. economy and generally had little impact on the wages or employment levels of native-born Americans. In April 1,500 economists sent a letter to Trump and congressional leaders saying, “With the proper and necessary safeguards in place, immigration represents an opportunity rather than a threat to the economy and to American workers.”

The Trump administration may want to devote the rest of 2017 to fighting on multiple fronts its war on immigration, but Senate rules and political reality are standing in the way.