Trump unveils 'merit-based' immigration policy plan
bbc.com
bbc.com
The way I see it, only those highly qualified shall apply. If an american can do the job, then an american should do it.
> he proposed moving away from the current system that favours applicants with family ties to the US
If a citizen is in the country and they want to bring their family over, that should be their right.
I do not agree. What constitutes family is arbitrary, but there are generally allowances (in most countries) for spouses and children who are still minors (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nationality_law). The allowances for spouses and children are not ubiquitous around the world.
The Clinton administration had a bit of trouble figuring out custom rules to what constituted "family". How many generations? What about anyone married to them and then from there on. It's legally logical to assume there's no connection between my French citizenship (received as an adult) and my brother (who is an adult).
The main sponsorship that's currently easier in the US than other countries is parents of citizens, who are considered immediate relatives and are not subject to quota.
Honestly, Trump could propose single payer healthcare or universal pre-K and the anti-Trump crowd would oppose it.
A helpful exercise for people of both parties is to ask if you would agree with a given policy if “your guy” had said it.
Sure, "Talented Doctor Immigrant" migrates to the US and sponsors "Illiterate Cousin", but IC finds a less skilled role, and still has the familial support of TDI. In fact, oftentimes, this takes the form of small business loans. It's basically how every ethnic community in the US flourished, from German migrants settling the midwest to recent immigrant-fueled boons like the Indian population in Edison, NJ.
The system may be a little outdated in the globalized world, but it's a source of labor that mitigates the risk of antisocial consequences (IC turns to crime, is exploited at work, becomes a burden on the government, etc). I don't entirely agree that it's the "right" of a new immigrant, but eliminating it could have far greater consequences on the future of American than it may seem.
Not that immigration to Japan even if you're rich and well positioned is such a good deal.
Merit based systems are usually based on advanced college degrees. Who are the kinds of people that get advanced college degrees? Well first you have to have had access to good primary education, and then good secondary education, and then a good undergraduate education. People from poor countries tend not to have those things, even the smart people from poor countries.
"Give me your cold, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free". Being an American isn't just about capitalism.
We have a responsibility towards fellow Americans. If the Chinese have a bias against people from their countryside, it’s not up to us to fix their mess. We want people who can come here and contribute, not be welfare for them because their own country isn’t doing the right thing. We would not be doing “the right thing” by Americans if we subsidized this either.
That poem was written one year after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. We really need to stop using it as justification for anything.
The questions are more like: 1. is this fair? and 2. would the reduction in number of immigrants be harmful to economic growth?
What if there is something deep down, something idealistic like "Equality" and "Freedom" that should actually be a right for every person on earth? That you shouldn't have to have a Harvard education to claim? Isn't the USA the place that promises that opportunity? That you can strive and work hard, and make a better life for yourself and your family?
I'm not saying kick out the doctors and ceos, but being a doctor or ceo should not be the bar for entering the US.
I don’t see why it’s our responsibility to do “equal opportunity” to a foreign population we have no responsibility for. We have this responsibility for our own population, yes, but others are out of scope completely.
Hint: Not a first world country, it is India.
This isn't accurate at all. Sure wealth might help with merit but it's not always the case. I would argue it can sometimes be harmful too (I know people who came from rich background but were later deported back because they failed their program, DUI, did drugs etc). I myself immigrated to Canada from a South Asian country with poor family background. Just because we are poor doesn't always mean we aren't or can't get educated. A lot of people (I am not saying all but I am saying a lot) in the poor parts of my country are the ones which go to public school and take as much advantage of the education opportunities available. Our country's previous President came from an extremely poor background, used to sell newspaper and tea on subway stations when he was a kid but grew up into one of the most recognized rocket scientists, developed 5 missiles and became the president. So poor doesn't always mean we can't work hard to achieve merit.
With my hard work, I was able to secure a decent scholarship in Canada. Canada has a merit based system and it works well. I also appreciate merit based system vs a lottery draw system US has as I would rather have people understand I came here because of my own hard work and merit instead of just because I got lucky or came from a rich background. That was one of the reasons I choose Canada instead of US many years ago for immigration because I would rather be chosen by merit instead of wait in a lottery as the current system in US. A lot of qualified people have been hesitant to try for US because they don't want to play the current lottery game. If US does change to merit going forward, we might continue higher education there.
I don't think Japan is really a model you want to copy. The decades of a stagnant economy despite low interest rates shows that something is wrong.
Also, highly-qualified people aren't the only ones who make things better for everyone. Some sort of citizenship path for entrepreneurs would help, given that our number of new businesses have been in decline for years.
Japan is probably the closest the world has to an ethnostate and could well be described as ethno-supremacists. They don't cop any flack for this because they're not westerners and only white people can be guilty of racism and xenophobia because colonialism (which ignores the fact that japan was a brutal colonial overlord to korea and taiwan).
Was it Canada or USA citizenship?
That is the most important line of the article. Without Democrat support, this plan will not pass in this congress. While it is possible it could pass in the next congress (2021), I would characterize it as unlikely. Both parties see the status quo in legal immigration as a good thing, with most changes in the day-to-day policies of USCIS being dictated by court rulings and not congress.
however most all reforms towards voting all lead to the same outcome, no competition for established parties. Oh sure they dress it up and market it as protecting us from big special interest or money but the real outcome is, no one is permitted to run who does not have the blessing of either party. the US pays towards the security of only the Democrat or Republican conventions just to make it clear how much they have locked out all other choices. People decry barriers to voting but the real issue is the barrier to even be a choice.
Right now, unauthorized immigrants are 24% of maids and cleaners, half of ag workers, and a big chunk of construction labor and home aides like nannies.
These jobs are filled by immigrants because they are a big step up for a lot of the people arriving here, while Americans don't want them. In a saner world, work visas for unskilled labor and a pathway up to citizenship would benefit everyone.
Instead, the president seems to want a carve-out for the tech and health industry that makes life more precarious for everyone else.
Source on numbers: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-us-jobs-econ...
Someone will always have to do those jobs (at least for a long time until when/if machines do them), we shouldn't expect them to be fulfilled only by immigrants willing to take jobs that nobody else wants.
In Scandinavia - up to a degree - those kind of jobs carry a big pay and a set of perks that makes people actually wanting to take them, instead of being a last resort activity. It also helps create a positive view in society about those jobs instead of being a motive for social discrimination.
Former construction worker here.
Americans don't want these jobs at the below-market wages they pay. The wages would be higher if not for the supply being inflated by laborers willing to work for below minimum wage.
The most dangerous job in the world (Alaskan crab fisherman) is brutal, dirty, and high paying. Therefore there are always American citizens waiting on the docks to learn the trade.
Not saying I don't want more immigration in the US. I want WAY more of it, but only if it's not reducing pay in entry level vocations.
Somehow no one that matters in politics is willing to point this out against the other side.
So what you are saying may be largely true for low-wage ag labor, but it's not 100% true for fair wage low-skill ag labor.
The whole article has gross, racist undertones of wanting a brown serf class to do disgusting work in terrible conditions for poverty wages.
Contrary to the popular narrative, businesses CAN pay migrant labor fair wages. Few of them will voluntarily do so though, which is why this country desperately needs revamped modernized labor laws.
Both workers and companies want what's good for them, that's not so much 'selfish'.
Noting is really 'artificial' in this either, it's all market forces, though one might argue that the 'off the books' labour is to some extent an artificial impetus.
If 'cheap undocumented labour' were not available, yes, you are right, more automation would come into play, but that doesn't imply it would all be automated, as much of it cannot.
Most likely outcome would be: 1) a lot of farming is simply unsustainable in any case, and it moves to Mexico. This is good thing however as it provides jobs at wages upon which people can have a normal life there, and helps expand their economy. 2) full automation in some areas for net lost jobs 3) partial automation in others (machinery is always getting smarter and better even if it doesn't fully automate) and 4) high paying jobs for the crops that can maintain margin.
But it's all moot: there's a reason nations have laws, citizenship, constitutions etc. and having people live and work on the black market without legal wages, health insurance, worker's rights, etc. etc. is self defeating.
It'd be better to play by the rules - either enforce the laws as they exist, or enact an 'above board' migrant workers program (i.e. short term visas) for workers to come so they don't have to hide in the shadows and can have at least some kind of labour protection which everyone should have.
When it's at the expense of the other party, that literally is what "selfish" means.
A better term in this context would be 'self interest'.
It turns out skilled labor is still really important even if you have a bunch of machines printing and milling material.
You simultaneously point out that low skilled jobs are being lost to automation, and advocate for bringing in more low skilled workers for this dwindling pool of jobs. Seems cruel.
I see your point also. I assure you, I don't mean to be cruel. The problem is, what is cruel to one can be kind to another, and vice versa. That immigrant has hopes and dreams, and maybe a family, too. If the global pool of jobs is shrinking, and the global pool of workers is growing, the system will move toward equilibrium. Jobs will shift person by person, factory by factory, or industry by industry. Increasing the premium for our labor, and thus for the products of that labor, only ensures that it will be industry by industry. This process is already under way. I'm sorry, but it's the market that is cruel.
So, since I'm away from my own home and have some time to spare, what does that mean in terms of KirinDave's idea to keep entry-level jobs for Americans? I'll be blunt: that's stupid. Americans, who have to earn a certain wage to maintain even the lowest standard of living, can never be as cost-effective as people to whom that same wage looks like a king's ransom.
That's where "merit based" immigration comes in. It's about making the best and the brightest from all over the world part of our ecosystem instead of a competing one. It's a deliberate brain drain. It leaves the low-skill workers where they are, unable to compete job by job but also bereft of any leadership that would enable them to compete industry by industry. It's unfair - one might even say cruel - to them, but global fairness is not a goal. It's an effective way to promote Trump's and KirinDave's goal of propping up uneducated Americans' wages. I just happen to think that's a lousy goal, not least because it's not sustainable. The longer we put it off, the worse the eventual result will be.
That's uh.. not my idea? You mention me a lot here but you've comically misrepresented my position, which you can't really know because the only thing I've articulated on this subject in this thread is that Tesla tried and failed spectacularly to automate, and that the American (really Victorian) idea of trying to replace all human labor with machines (or at least make it LOOK like it's all machines) hasn't fared very well overall despite it being a near religious conviction by many western industrialists.
Meanwhile, China's labor policies (which in my personal belief system lead to reprehensible limitations on human freedom and rights) lead to a country that is industrially crushing the rest of the world to a degree that we haven't seen since post-WW2 where American interests could push their products on others because everyone else's industrial bases were smoking craters due to war.
> That's where "merit based" immigration comes in. It's about making the best and the brightest from all over the world part of our ecosystem instead of a competing one. It's a deliberate brain drain.
You misspelled "richest", because that's actually the goal. We're getting tepid, moderately talented but quite wealthy Elon Musks. Once, we were significantly better at the "brain drain" and it showed during WW2. And perhaps that's for the best, because the circumstances that lead to the genuine brain drains of WW2 were quite dire.
> It leaves the low-skill workers where they are, unable to compete job by job but also bereft of any leadership that would enable them to compete industry by industry.
But at the end of the day, the notion that the folks you are leaving behind are not essential to society as a whole is a capitalist dogma not supported by reality. The idea that society isn't built on essential but socially dismissed and denigrated labor like construction, cleaning , and even sex work is a fantasty. It's the Victorian desire to have a "dumb waiter" all over again, only on a much larger scale. And this myth largely persists because western industrialists imagine a fantasy world in which Taiwan and China are full of magic robots and not millions of skilled (and socially oppressed) humans.
> It's unfair - one might even say cruel - to them, but global fairness is not a goal.
Indeed. The goal is to realize Burke's dream and roll back every social contract change post-French Revolution. I'm well read on the capitalist ethos.
> It's an effective way to promote Trump's and KirinDave's goal of propping up uneducated Americans' wages.
Trump's goal is to prop up the wages of under-educated Americans? What? The man and his party's policies have rendered over half of the farmers in America desperate, directly threatened the livelihood of many American manufacturing workers with his pointless tariffs, and outright declared war on American unions. He is as anti-worker as they come. The fact that you think otherwise is a reflection of the phenomenal branding engine.
> I just happen to think that's a lousy goal, not least because it's not sustainable. The longer we put it off, the worse the eventual result will be.
I'm not sure what you're advocating at all. The completely abandonment and disenfranchisement of every skilled laborer that doesn't meet your definition of "educated?" The radical purging or forced labor of anyone who doesn't meet specific economic or physical standards? Many US States already do that via their justice system. Does that not already satisfy you?
If you want to talk about unsustainable systems, we need only look at the current political environment in America, where voters are so disenfranchised, misinformed and manipulated that a toxic hyperindustrialst grifter can hold power just because folks are so pissed at the status quo that hope of massive disruption is all they can hold on to.
Eventually, folks are gonna stop believing in all the delays. Already, fascists interests in the US are gathering people who've hit that breaking point and organizing them to point at perceived enemies. Already, we see people who question truths known and trivially observable for thousands of years because they're so convinced the entire system is out to get them. Already, folks know that their punishments for challenging the rule of law are only truly enforced towards the poor and the forgotten.
But you see, part of the magic of neoliberal thought is that imported workers don't qualify as an economically oppressed population. If you import laborers, pay them less than minimum wage, force them to live in substandard living conditions, and work them half to death, this is still considered "fair" (and maybe even "laudable") because conditions were bad for them back home. Their life is possibly better now, slightly. And it's more affordable than raising wages.
> Eventually, folks are gonna stop believing in all the delays. Already, fascists interests in the US are gathering people who've hit that breaking point and organizing them to point at perceived enemies. Already, we see people who question truths known and trivially observable for thousands of years because they're so convinced the entire system is out to get them. Already, folks know that their punishments for challenging the rule of law are only truly enforced towards the poor and the forgotten.
Unfortunately for all of us, the people in power think they can prevent this eventuality using technical solutions. My fear is that they won't realize their plan has failed until it's too late to stop a true fascist movement from getting off the ground. Suppress moderate popular movements for long enough and you will create a radical popular movement; in today's America, this would probably be fascism.
It's true, they're still economically oppressed. That's more or less a constant. But I'd also like to think that if they say, "I'm here because I'm less worse off" that I can take that statement at face value and provide protection for them. I am quite tired of the notion that we have to hurt people and ignore their own agency to "save" them. We often see people handwave these concerns away with talk of trafficking, which magically invokes the specter of prostitutes in chains in the trunks of cars, and then we stop talking about what people want or need and instead about how the state can "protect" them.
I am of the opinion that both longer-term structural reform and short term workarounds are not only compatible, but the only consistent position for a compassionate human.
> . Suppress moderate popular movements for long enough and you will create a radical popular movement; in today's America, this would probably be fascism.
Hence the essential role of antifa actors and free information folks.
You complain about strawmen, then launch a straw giant like that? What I actually believe is that we should do more to help people get on a path to a stable, well paying, fulfilling job. Education can be part of that. A living wage can be part of that. Universal health insurance can be a part of that. Even unions can be part of that (but perhaps not in their current corrupt/co-opted form). But discrimination and exclusion can't. Not for long, and not on a global scale. If you also oppose discrimination and exclusion, why are you trying so hard to pick a fight here?
This was more a rhetorical "obviously this is false" statement than a genuine articulation of your position.
> If you also oppose discrimination and exclusion, why are you trying so hard to pick a fight here?
You're the one accusing me of... I am not even sure anymore. Of somehow aligning with the current US president over inflating wages which you do like but you don't like but you do think should be done but maybe not because it's not sustainable.
I get the impression you have not carefully formulated an articulate form of your beliefs and then tried to convey it to others. I showed this conversation to a few other folks just to see if I've got a blind spot. I didn't discover one, sadly, because they agreed that it seems like you're arguing against yourself at least as much as you're expressing antipathy towards whatever ideas you think I have.
The only thing I "discriminate" against (besides my sorting algorithms ;) is the notion of hyper-concentration of capital into individuals.
They don't exist and probably won't exist for another 25 years at that price point. Nor is it clear they'd be faster than a group of humans doing the same work.
What's more, it's just not clear to me why we'd do this. The only demand for this is by mega-farm-corps that want to eliminate all human factors to completely own the idea of making food under robotic patents. While I can appreciate such actors exist, it' not clear to me how it will be competitive with human sustenance farming in our lifespan. The low-hanging fruit of automation in the farm space has already been found. The new frontier there is in informatics and new configurations of farms (e.g., China's extremely efficient and inexpensive greenhouses, Japan's prototype vertical industrial farms). Most farming innovation now is about informatics, and only intersects with robotics tangentially.
If society was such that people who were displaced by this process were not suddenly thrown into destitution and often slavery instead of leisure and plenty, maybe we'd see wider demand. Maybe. But that's not the case. Displacing workers is seen as a net good by capitalists and the displaced are also blamed and shunned by their governments and societies. As such, it's pretty unlikely the technology could see widespread adoption without more alignment of incentives.
American agriculture has always relied, more or less, on underpaying its laborers, the extreme case being slavery (entirely unpaid, entirely forced, human beings were "owned"). After slavery was officially ended, we still hire the least politically empowered, and the most easily abused. The constant threat of deportation is a feature for American ag owners; it's hardly a step away from slavery, because yes, people can return to their own countries, but they aren't rational economic actors in any reasonable sense of the word.
Anyone can pick berries for a day, but someone who has been working on farms for 30 years will give exponentially more output because of the muscle memory and constitution they have developed. It is a true form of skilled labor, and it's the truth behind articles where farms struggled to replace immigrant labor with Americans. (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/us/farmers-strain-to-hire...).
As exploitative as the industry is (and, depending on your view of capitalism, you may say all labor is exploitative), it was significantly better before President Clinton's 1996 immigration law (https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11515132/iirira-clinton-immigr...). Seasonal workers could migrate to the US, work temporarily, and then return home for their own growing season with relative ease. Many of these workers only felt pressured to bring in their families and settle permanently after their own, US-based livelihoods were threatened.
Restoring temporary worker status would be a huge benefit for America's agricultural industry. Recognizing the competence and skill involved in growing our food would also help us make sure crops get picked. Automation that improves throughput per worker and affords workers more benefits should be the end-goal, but there's no way we'll be able to reach it with the industry's current political climate.
I just wanted to link this video, because it's a great example of what it means for farm labor to be skilled labor:
https://twitter.com/UFWupdates/status/1005532868007739392
That's not an efficiency of movement you get after a week of doing this work; there's a LOT of practice in being able to do that all day long.
These people are paid extremely poorly for the expertise they bring to their work.
I agree with your overall point, that more people would be willing to work those jobs if the wages were higher. But your phrasing reveals the paradox intrinsic in this issue. If undocumented labourers are willing for work for under the minimum wage, then that is in fact, the "market wage", i.e. the intersection of the minimum the labourer would accept and the maximum the employer would pay.
"Minimum wage" is set by the local or state government and it's pretty much only Republicans who fight to put downward pressure on it. So to depend on that same party to present federal policy that focuses on degrees rather than family members, ignores the economic reality that will keep people coming in to take sub-minimum wage jobs.
This post is only half glib. The serious half is we should work dilligently to decriminalize reasonable immigration cases like seasonal work. We can keep the money and weapons movement illegal if you like. But human movement for work? It's strictly pride and a fair measure of racism that keeps us from the obvious conclusion that the border should be a rubber stamp.
We're talking about the US in this thread. Saying, "Well what about the Korean border?" like it's all that relevant is a waste of everyone's time in a conversation about the US borders. I'm not espousing a universal policy. I'm saying US border politics are currently (and historically have almost always been) about racism, and it shows.
Even if we take into account how that number is reduced in volume, the issue with these jobs is not that Americans can't find them, it's that they don't want to take them.
I don't mean to imply that Americans are being irrational or incorrect. Merely that the jobs you're referring to often aren't considered actionable by many Americans, and the numbers suggest this is a far more powerful factor.
Perhaps if we agree to a higher minimum wage and more aggressively pursue affordable housing solutions near where these jobs are, then we can see other effects.
It's a pain to see a senior engineer from India or China have to go home because their 6 years of H-1B are up.
That said, I’ve always thought there was a glaring hole in our immigration policy, which is that people who come and earn a degree in the US should have an easy option to stay and work and become citizens if they would like.
It seems crazy to me that we’re investing a ton in the people who come here for higher education and then making it difficult for them to stay here and use the skills and education they acquired.
The only people I can imagine who would be against this are corporate interests, who can use visas to enforce a kind of indentured-servitude over high-skilled workers seeking residency in the current system. But given the way the economic winds are blowing, I don't see how the US is going to compete in the future if they don't try to keep all the talent in the country they can.
Don’t foreign people coming for higher education pay tuition fees out of their own pockets?
The experience I was drawing this from is the international students who I studied with, many of whom were really smart and who had acquired a great deal of technical skill here in the US, who then wanted to stay and use their skills here but had a difficult time with the immigration process.
To me it's crazy that we'd push high-skill people back out of the country if they'd like to stay.
Foreign students pretty much always pay full fare so they a profit center for U.S. universities not really an investment.
This is why the government subsidizes tuition via pell-grants, etc.
They don't really take up slots though. More like they fund slots for other students to not pay full fare.
No, this would immediately put Universities in the business of selling citizenship. Of course they'd probably love that. Though foreign student exports have doubled in the last few years, it'd grow even faster as a source of revenue for them.
The criteria for admissions in many undergrad/graduate programs is really not that high, and some schools are not very expensive at all.
"we’re investing a ton in the people who come here"
When foreign students pay tuition that's an export for the US, it's not so much 'the US investing in them' (though I understand many are on scholarships, and the institutions get indirect funding).
There are 1.1 Million foreign students in the US, and it's a $42 Billion dollar export [1]. That's quite a lot of money (and quite a lot of people).
Surely, under a 'merit based system' foreign students should get a bunch of 'points' towards the system, but a broad points-based system is by far better than a 'buy your undergrad/citizenship' program.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/magazine/one-of-americas-...
We could, at the same time, make standards a lot higher to obtain a student visa in the first place.
I for one have no problem making it extremely hard to get a student visa or an H1. But it seems to me rather unfair to allow someone to build a life here for 6 or 8 years and then deport them.
In general, a system where only the most promising individuals are awarded immigrant visas, and where it is extremely difficult and unpleasant to reside here as an illegal immigrant, but where anyone who has resided here for a given number if years (legally or otherwise) is automatically a permanent resident, might be a marked improvement over the current system. Almost all new immigrants would be economic assets, would not drive down wages for working class citizens. And at the same time the problem of the "dreamers" already here will be solved.
We aren't. People who come here to do that are a revenue source subsidizing domestic students, in public institutions. That may not be the case in private institutions, but in that case it is the private institution that is investing in them, presumably because it is a net gain in terms of how that institution envisions it's mission.
Those folks pay a lot to come here in most higher learning institutions.
I didn't mean "invest" as in cash investment, I meant the educational investment -- our institutions are putting in time and energy to build skills.
Yes the students pay for it, and yes this makes money for the universities, I wasn't trying to say anything about that part.
Rather, drawing from my own life experience: I studied with a number of really sharp international students, who through their own talent and hard work in university acquired great technical skills. Many of those people then wanted to stay in the US permanently, but weren't able to get through immigration.
My point is that it seems very strange for us to be pushing high-motivation, high-skill people out of the country if they would like to stay -- even more strange when they came and acquired the skills here. Those people are going to be a great contribution to whichever country they call home, if they'd like to make their contribution here then I personally would welcome them with open arms.
Why would they do that? As it is the proposal is a gift to Democrats, exactly what they ought to want to run against: a Republican flip-flop from opposing immigrants taking American jobs to wanting only immigrants who will take good jobs away from Americans.
At best, endorsing it would deepen the split between the neoliberal centrist wing of the Democratic Party and the progressive populist wing, but even the neoliberal centrist wing, which probably likes the idea of more focus on immigrants who can depress wages for good jobs, probably doesn't like it coming at the expense of family unification (they’d prefer to see it on top.)
> White House has signaled many times they are willing to do something for the dreamers in exchange for something.
Only for a very narrow definition of “something”; they've flat out expressly stated (not merely signalled) that they are unwilling to do so except in exchange for The Wall.