Didn't take Bannon long: GOP Senators seek to cut LEGAL immigration

Just search Bannon and legal immigration.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/2/14472404/steve-bannon-legal-immigration-problem. We must give credit to this administration in that it does what it says it will do.

 

Any reduction in immigration will reduce those nationalities as they constitute the majority. You don't need any links to infer motivations. I thought this was obvious from the statistics that are widely available.

 

There were no action even when presidents from both parties pushed for it. Even if a bill wasn't passed, there has been ongoing debates on a national level.

Illegal immigration was a wedge issue because it was assumed that legal immigration served business and economic interests for the right and it served the interests of diversity/multiculturalism/idealism for the left.

The move to reduce a marginal < 1% population quota for immigration is a surprise. There will definitely be a reaction to it.

I didn't mention H1Bs in this thread.

I have my biases. I live on the coasts, and I'm used to being a minority in any borough I go to. I also think upfront investment towards assimilation is a gesture in goodwill that pays off even if my parents didn't get any of it. I'm sure nativists think that's unfair and robbery of their tax dollars, but I've seen plenty opportunities of that given back. I've also seen chances given in good faith wasted, so it's definitely not easy finding the right balance.

I think it's good to debate these viewpoints, but I'm not going to ignore that people like Bannon or Cotton were the catalysts to these discussions and pretend the emotional responses held by the ones most affected are unjustifiable or irrational.

 

The biggest benefits of immigration are the brain drain and the overall increased population which both contribute positively toward the US economy.

If we have a few years of real stagflation or even deflation, the economy is going to go belly up again. Too many people are not even prepared for retirement.

I, for one, have no qualms about immigrants who want to come here for economical and social liberties. Then again, it won't matter when we are serfs again to our robot overlords (automation).

 

I'm all for this.This will dramatically help American workers and prevent lowering wages. I like.

 

Too many Americans, only people of their skin color and religion are true Americans. Everyone else is a sub American and gets a hyphen. Asian-American, African-American, Latino-American, etc.

When you view the citizenship this way, then it's only logical that immigrants today are not worth accepting.

It's also a view that why are we accepting so many H1Bs when we have American CS grads who can't get a job at a real wage.

Immigration is complicated.

 

Sure we can discuss immigration, but how exactly does cutting legal immigration help anything?

 

Cut it in half especially if you have trouble processing 1 million allowed now. Setting a goal of 500k (half) while they fix, redevelop, improve, the process is a good idea. Much easier to chew on a problem if you take smaller bites.

 

It's been around a million for almost 25 years.

 

I don't have much regard for a protectionist argument here -- that reducing legal immigration will mean more jobs for US citizens. Jobs for citizens are great and all, but we're supposed to be a meritocratic capitalist society. If Indians (or whomever) who migrate here can steal jobs from Americans, then how are we going to beat India in the international marketplace? If we want jobs for Americans, improve education and training; don't try to protect their jobs by lowering the talent standard.

The OP article says the H1-Bs would not be impacted by this bill.

 

Bandwagoner good point: can we not debate our immigration number?

Bandwagoner bad point: oh look at y'all bringing up white nationalism again.

My take:
1. Yes, let's debate our immigration number. Totally fair. I didn't see a debate, FWIW. Just the slash.
2. Meanwhile, yes, let's have open eyes (while that is legal) and admit that this act is completely consistent with the xenophobic comments of Wormtongue.

I don't understand why ignoring his philosophy, his influence, and his very recent past makes someone more logical or more upright or more patriotic or anything else. Ignoring Wormtongue and his fantasies, for good and for ill, just sounds like a really dumb idea to me.

 

Some people just like to pretend that racism or xenophobia just doesn't exist.

Or if it does, it only exists in cases like Dylan Roof.

 

H1-B visas are a reactionary measure to the low enrollment of domestic American kids into STEM fields especially engineering. There is a shortage in engineering talent that must be addressed.

 

It's basically affirmative action for American citizens. They are worried that Americans can't compete with immigrants for certain jobs, and so they want immigrants to not be able to compete. Rather than allow the best applicants based on merit to get the jobs they want to restrict the applicants.

Normally conservatives are against affirmative action, but in this case, they are crying for it. The only difference is that in this case the affirmative action isn't designated from a group that had been targeted for segregation in the past.

 

Why cut anything? Having Drumpf in office is already the biggest deterrent to immigration.

 

1- should be reformed (way overdue), with some protection for american workers, while allowing no brain dump or critical loss of expertise needed; have no idea what the balance is...
2- should be gentle on families here; family structure is important and we shouldn't deny family from uniting; you know, doing the moral and right thing
3- should not be anti-immigration for the nothing more than being anti-immigration
4- (and this is probably covered in a bunch of other thread); but no, reducing immigration is not going to raise wages for low-income job or hire more Americans; company will find other ways to offset

And I'm going to throw out that working through Congress is at least a process that allow some debates. Aren't we all tired of EOs?

 

Idea: Betsy DeVos will help prime the K-12 pump to make sure we're turning out tons of engineers.

Spoiler

 

And it sucks. Needs to be fast with advanced vetting capability. It can be done if someone takes time and spends money to redesign it.

 

We actually have decent demographics, most developed countries don't have as young of a population as us. With that said, I don't see the point in keeping the "spigot" turned onto a million when we already have strained entitlement and social net spending. I don't believe in any of the white nationalism crap, it's merely an issue to where we need to get our own house in order before we keep doing what we have been doing.

Bannon and Trump are obviously playing to the nationalists, but there's a reason to temporarily limit immigration that has nothing to do with racism.