Family-based migration absolutely does exist in other countries, including those you have specifically named. It may not be as extensive as in US, but that's a different matter.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/sponsor/
https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Brin
And yes, having an eligible family member does effectively "guarantee you a spot as an immigrant yourself". Point-based system is for skilled immigration.
Sorry, I genuinely meant that its not as extensive.
"Australia admits approximately two-thirds of its immigrants on skill criteria and strives to recruit persons during their peak working ages (Walsh, 2008). By contrast, about two-thirds of U.S. immigrants are family sponsored, without regard to skills or age (Wasem, 2007)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3516050/
Do you agree with me that the rhetoric and outrage surrounding this proposal are dramatically overblown when considering the statistics and practices in a very liberal country like Australia?
This is my main point. There is a debate to be had, and the left/liberal/progressive/MSM want to shut it down with scary headlines. This is most definitely an example of fake news.
So if you want to see ratios more like in Australia or Canada, the first thing you should do is not clamp down on family immigration, but open up skilled immigration - e.g. by removing H-1B quotas, or (better yet) creating a proper work-your-way-to-citizenship visa with no quotas. That will increase the overall number of immigrants, but most of that increase will come from skilled immigration, evening things out.
Of course, at that point you'll want to have some merit-based system (points etc), because otherwise you'll get too many skilled immigrants to process...
I think that a lot of people on the left would actually be fine with that kind of tradeoff - point-based system, but without quotas. So larger number of immigrants overall, but eligibility bar is higher, and skilled immigration is more prominent compared to family immigration. Would you be okay with that?
What is the rationale behind this? Or how will this benefit existing citizens? Where do you draw the line for a cap on immigration, and why?
There is an almost infinite number of people who want to come to the US. Decisions must be made fairly and consistently, and to the benefit of the standard of living of existing citizens.
H1-B = 236K applicants / 85K spots
So that is ~150K high-skilled people who want to come but cannot right now. I would say the first priority is to ensure this system is not being used to drive down wages, and not being used to abuse migrants.
If companies still need these people to grow the economy, and cannot find US people to do it, then we should get them in first.
Family-based immigration must be done in a way to ensure that we are not creating greater demands on the economy. They should be able to support themselves and not contribute to the decrease in participation rate, and increasing unemployment.
> "28% of new [tech] startups in America are started by immigrants," - Ron Conway > "Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Doll..."
This says that there should have some kind of entrepreneurial visa.
There was no rationale. You keep pointing at Australia etc as a desirable model, and I told you what you'd need to do to make your system more like those countries, and what the result of that would be.
In particular, those countries don't have quotas on skilled immigration. Well, not explicit ones - any point system establishes an inherent limit.
> I would say the first priority is to ensure this system is not being used to drive down wages, and not being used to abuse migrants.
I don't think there are many people who would disagree with you. As an ex-H1B, I don't see anything objectionable about the changes presented so far (and if I still were an H1B, I'd actually benefit from them).
Here are some nice charts here about who's using the system, and how:
https://www.axios.com/h1-b-salaries-2228205505.html
Note that what these numbers clearly tell is that it's not Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc that are a problem wrt wages. It's Tata, Infosys and similar sweat shops. Those are also the ones who get most of the H1B visa quota. Ironically, they're also the ones using H1B as a true temp worker visa - they rarely sponsor their employees for green cards.
In contrast, for most major tech company workers, H1B is a vehicle to green card and citizenship, and the companies themselves do encourage that, sponsoring employees and paying all filing and legal fees, because they are interested in retaining those workers long-term (and are paying well enough that they're not concerned that people would leave once they're no longer legally bound to the company).
So, imposing more stringent lower limits on wages would benefit the Googles of the world at the expense of Tatas, and would benefit people using H1B as immigration vehicle over temp workers.
> Family-based immigration must be done in a way to ensure that we are not creating greater demands on the economy. They should be able to support themselves and not contribute to the decrease in participation rate, and increasing unemployment.
Strictly speaking, family-based immigration already has such requirements. The sponsor must not only demonstrate sufficient minimum income to provide for the person they're sponsoring, but they're also required to sign a legally enforceable pledge making them financially liable for support of that person:
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-pr...
This remains in force until that person becomes a citizen, which would be at least 5 years after getting green card in most cases (you need 5 years of permanent residency to apply for citizenship normally; 3 if you're married to a citizen).
This all is very similar to Canada.
> This says that there should have some kind of entrepreneurial visa.
There are visas for investors, but they require considerable sums of money upfront. I don't think there's anything for people who are not self-funded in that manner, which likely accounts for most of the startups.
I think we both agree system needs reforming, and subtracting the political rhetoric from both sides, there is middle ground reform that should hopefully prevail.
The easiest way to do so is to put your immigrant hat on. Pretend that you're a foreigner who knows English, and see how you'd go about immigrating to US. Literally starting from a google search along the lines of "US immigration", and then go from there. When you see various different options presented to you (like student, family, investor etc), conjure virtual personas corresponding to either one of those, and see how far you can get down either track, what are the things that are required of you, what quotas apply if any, how much it costs in fees, what the processing times are etc. Consider how you'd plan around all that. Also see how it works if you're married - how you bring your spouse to the country, whether they can work at all before they can get a green card, what about children etc.
Once you get to the end of it, try doing the same thing, but for "legally bring my parents/siblings/... to the country". Again note the various options, requirements, fees, processing times etc.
It can also be instructive to do it for a few other English-speaking countries (or those that have their immigration materials available in any language that you can understand), just to see how they all compare.
It's a lot like gun control. Based on your politics, I think it's a safe bet that you get annoyed when left-wing politicians talk about "weapons or war" or some such, without any actual knowledge of how guns work or how to operate one, beyond "it's a shoulder thing that goes up". To write meaningful gun legislation, one has to understand guns well, right? Well, same thing applies here.