05/21/2019
President Trump has called for a fundament change in the government’s immigration system to require skills of entrants, rather than continue the current family-based system concocted by Sen Ted Kennedy in 1965.
It’s a popular proposal, according to a Rasmussen poll published May 20, titled, Voters Still See Skills-Based Legal Entry As Immigration Fix:
Voters continue to believe the U.S. immigration system is broken and still tend to favor shifting to the skills-based system that President Trump is proposing.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters agree with Senator Lindsey Graham’s assessment last week that “we have a perfect storm brewing at the border because of a series of broken and outdated laws related to asylum and children.”
Tucker Carlson recently presented some observations about “merit” as a value in immigration after the Democrats had the predictable reaction of squawking “Racist!” at the president for common sense. Rep. Maxine Waters reflexively described the Trump immigration policy as “very racist” last week for requiring knowledge of English among newbies.
Some noticed that the Trump plan contained no overall reduction of immigrant numbers — something strongly indicated by the anemic wage growth among US workers. NumbersUSA released a video on May 6 expressing the worker viewpoint:
Another reason to decrease immigration is the increased use of worker-replacing robots. For example, Walmart (America’s largest company by revenue) is turning to automation to save money and increase efficiency:
Plus there is no discussion anywhere of the enormous factor of world population growth — now over 7.7 billion persons, more than double the 3.7 billion residents of the planet on the first Earth Day in 1970. Nearly all of that growth has occurred in the Third World which is now happy to send its excess people to America’s open border — remittances to follow, bringing billions of dollars to alien-sending countries south of the border and beyond.
Heres’s Tucker on the argument for merit-based immigration:
TUCKER CARLSON: Good evening, and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” This week, the Trump administration revealed its proposal to overhaul America’s immigration system. The proposal would not by itself build the often promised wall on our southern border, nor would it cut current levels of immigration despite the fact that most Americans would like to see that happen.
The one big thing the administration’s proposal would do is give priority to immigrants who might actually help America — skilled workers with English proficiency. It’s hard to see an argument against a system like that — there isn’t really an argument against that system.
For years, Democrats have argued that immigrants make vital additions to our economy. They’re smarter than we are, they’re harder working, they do better in school. They found more companies.
Well, the President has decided to take Democrats at their word; he says he wants all of those good things that immigrants bring. Watch:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We want immigrants coming in, we cherish the open door that we want to create for our country. But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill.
CARLSON: Well, much of the world would move here if they could — hundreds and hundreds of millions of people. So why wouldn’t we pick the absolute best immigrants with skills in English who would fit in better here, their kids would do better in school, they’d be more likely to contribute to social programs instead of draining them.
So are Democrats rejoicing in this change? Of course not. They’re outraged. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke for the party when she declared that really merit is a bad word because everybody has merit:
REP. NANCY PELOSI: I want to just say something about the word that they use, “merit.” It is really a condescending word. Are they saying family is without merit? Are they saying most of the people who have ever come to the United States in the history of our country are without merit, because they don’t have an engineering degree?
Certainly, we want to attract the best to our country and that includes many people from many parts of society.
CARLSON: What a shame we can’t staff the Democratic Caucus in the Congress using the same criteria the Speaker would like to fill our country. “We want to attract the best for many parts of the world,” she says. But of course by that, Pelosi doesn’t mean what she says. She means just the opposite because what exactly is best about immigrants who have criminal records or middle school education, or no ability to hold a job?
The answer is, there’s nothing “best” about that. Immigrants like that might be nice people, but they’re much more likely to burden the United States than to benefit, at least economically. Harvard doesn’t admit students who can’t speak English. It says so right on their website, so why should our country?
The left doesn’t want to answer questions like that or even have the conversation. “Shut up racist.” It is said and is declared that the current system is great. No evidence necessary. Watch this former Obama official make her fact-free case on MSNBC yesterday:
RUTGERS ECONOMICS PROFESSOR JENNIFER HUNT: What’s less obvious is that medium and even the least-skilled immigrants also contribute to the U.S. economy. They come in and they do different things for natives and they allow everyone to specialize more in what they’re doing best.
It’s that contribution of the unskilled immigrants that I think people overlook when they really push the so-called merit-based or as it is called in other countries, the point system.
CARLSON: So what Professor Hunt and so many on the left, including the Speaker of the House are arguing for is a feudal system where foreign-born worker bees toil to support a smug and pampered managerial class, of which they of course are part.
There’s no other explanation for our current policies. We don’t need more low-skilled workers in the United States, we have plenty of low skilled workers. Their unemployment rate is higher than the national average. Their wage growth has been abysmal for decades — generations. So how do those workers benefit from having more competition? Of course they don’t.
How does the country benefit by having more low-skilled workers when technological changes may soon render millions of them permanently jobless? The answer, of course is that we won’t benefit.
But for the left, whether the country benefits is not the point. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar herself a symbol of America’s failed immigration system, if there ever was one; someone who hates this country coming here at public expense, spent yesterday demanding the abolition of ICE, the decriminalization of illegal immigration itself and an end to all deportation programs.
She demands open borders, the unlimited arrival of anyone who wants to come to America whether they have anything to contribute or not. And by the way, you get to pay for it. And if you don’t want to, you’re a bigot.
You know what this is really about, of course, it’s not about civil rights. It’s a joke. It’s about money and power — their money, their power.
The left has aligned with business interests that profit from cheap, obedient workers. Low-skilled immigrants have a harder time assimilating into the American mainstream. They stay poor. They learn English more slowly. They’re more likely to remain an ethnic underclass, all of which makes them much more likely to vote Democratic long term. That’s the point, obviously.
Skilled immigrants might assimilate and become less reliable Democratic voters. They might even compete with the children of our ruling class. That’s not allowed. It’s safer to import serfs, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. Don’t let them tell you, it’s about civil rights, it’s not; it’s about their convenience and their power.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.