The Immigration Debate; Again.

ucbalumnus
Sat, 12 Aug 2017 14:43:58 +0000

younghoss:

I didn’t see that, and it sounds despicable. Many people feel like ending illegal immigration, and streamlining legal immigration, but I think (and I hope) few want to end legal immigration.

The proposed RAISE act would substantially reduce legal immigration, and seems to have political support among those who also want to build walls against illegal immigration. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/09/trump-immigration-polls-241422 is a recent poll on (various aspects of) the bill. Note that polling on the parts that would substantially reduce legal immigration is in line with general polling trends about legal immigration from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx . However, https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21726086-white-house-challenged-news-organisations-poll-test-its-immigration-proposals-heres references another recent poll results that show less (but still significant) tendency toward favoring reduced legal immigration.

The last article also notes that the extended family immigration provisions that would be ended by the RAISE act were enacted in 1965 because, “As a co-sponsor of the bill, the New York congressman Emanuel Celler, told colleagues: ‘Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries.’” Obviously, eventually, it did not work out in the way the original proponents of that provision wanted (which was to keep immigration white), which is likely at least part of the current motivation to end it.