Jared Kushner’s Immigration Plan Will Only Change The Composition Of Legal Immigration

Mark Krikorian:

“The White House immigration plan, whose development is being overseen by Jared Kushner, is an attempt to show what the administration is for, not just what it’s against. This is a useful exercise, even though there’s zero chance it will be approved by Congress. The goal appears to lay out a roadmap of where Republicans want to go on immigration. …

But there’s a fundamental problem that suggests the brain trust overseeing this effort is out of touch with the president’s base. The proposal will not include any reduction in the overall level of legal immigration, not even a symbolic one. In other words, all the reductions in green cards from ending the visa lottery and narrowing the family categories would be reallocated to the newly revised merit system. (This is unlike the approach of the Raise Act, which the president has endorsed, which would not shift the green cards from the family categories over to the skilled categories.)

This is especially important because the proposal is not really a legislative vehicle; there’s no chance an immigration bill even remotely acceptable to Republicans can make it through this Congress. That means this proposal is more of a campaign platform, outlining the official Republican approach to immigration. Formally embracing the current legal-immigration level of more than one million each year would mean that the GOP, as on so many issues before, would simply be the Democrat-lite party, wanting to go in the same direction, just more slowly.

You’d think bringing down the annual number of green cards issued from the current 1.1 million to, say, “just” one million wouldn’t be controversial for an iconoclastic president who’s in the White House mainly because of his hawkishness on immigration. But you’d be wrong.

Ever since this year’s State of the Union address, President Trump has been signaling his desire for an increase in immigration because of the low unemployment rate. This despite explicit commitments to the contrary during the campaign and earlier in his term. …

But the tone from unnamed White House sources working on the Kushner plan has recently turned from attempted persuasion of skeptical Trump supporters to Hillary-ish contempt.

To begin with, the authors of the White House plan seem to consider that they’ve already made a grudging but significant concession to the Deplorables simply by not including an increase in immigration, despite the president’s rhetoric. …”

Very interesting.

• The Kushner immigration plan has ZERO chance of passing Congress. Thus, the whole point of this exercise is to illustrate to “the base” in the 2020 election cycle how Jared Kushner would use power to handle immigration policy should Blompf be reelected to a second term
• The plan is to only change the composition of legal immigration so that more high-skilled immigrants are being admitted to compete with the declining middle class for their jobs. After all, we already have record levels of illegal immigration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, so we will still be getting plenty of low-skilled immigrant workers.
• There is ZERO REDUCTION in the overall number of legal immigrants being allowed into the country. This would be bad for business and putting “America First” is measured by The GDP.
• Even though Blompf is “strong on the border,” illegal immigration is currently worse than it ever was under Barack Hussein Obama. It is so bad that even The New York Times wants the Democratic House to give Blompf to stem the border crisis.

W. James Antle III:

“The Trump administration has already decided to make 30,000 additional visas available to temporary seasonal workers, an increase of about one-third above the existing cap. This move drew a rebuke from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the White House’s top congressional immigration allies, who said it would mean “more low-skilled workers” taking American jobs. But there are a few strategic reasons the Trump administration may be shying away from steep immigration cuts. …”

This is correct.

Blompf has actually expanded the legal immigration of temporary guest workers for the Cheap Labor Lobby. We also noticed how he repeatedly said during and after the State of the Union address that it was his goal to raise immigration to the highest level ever so that more immigrants than ever before are coming here to work in our economy to raise The GDP.

I’m scratching my head left wondering … as a populist voter, if “America First” in foreign policy means always putting the interests of Israel First and “America First” on immigration means record levels of illegal immigration and no reduction in legal immigration, then why should I vote on the basis of these issues? Why should I continue voting for the GOP on the basis of fake social issues?

The stunning thing to me is that the Kushner plan is a dead letter but is being pushed anyway. The only effect it will have will be to show that the GOP has no interest at all in reducing immigration after it literally voted against Blompf’s “national emergency” for the border wall in the Senate. The GOP Senate also voted to continue to indefinitely occupy Afghanistan and Syria.

We’ve seen this in two other areas. In foreign policy, Blompf’s attempt to oust Maduro in Venezuela went nowhere and only had the effect of making him look weak while alienating his own base. In the budget, Mick Mulvaney proposed huge cuts to entitlement programs which arrived as a dead letter in Congress. After winning the battle of “capitalism vs. socialism,” the plan is to go full Herbert Hoover in 2021 with spending cuts to the non-Israel related parts of the budget.

It’s going to be okay though.

We’re over Blompf now anyway. Andrew Yang has gone on record saying that he would support a national emergency to solve the border crisis. Why not give him a shot at it? Why not secure the bag for ourselves instead of voting for Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers to have it? It’s not like anything would be lost on immigration without the current administration in power.