GREG HARTON: Immigration plan worth an examination

Donald Trump's proposal for reforming immigration isn't so bad, as far as it goes.

In the Rose Garden of the White House Thursday, the president offered what might be called a broad outline of a plan to reform legal immigration into the United States. He said the current approach discriminates "against genius ... against brilliance."

Naturally, Trump's plan quickly gathered opposition from key Democrats and criticism from members of the president's own party who say it ignores too much about the immigration controversy to be viable.

"We all know you're not going to pass this without dealing with the other aspects of immigration," South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham said Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump's effort isn't serious. "If anything, it's a political document that is anti-immigration reform. It repackages the same partisan, radical, anti-immigrant policies that the administration has pushed for two years -- all of which have struggled to earn even a simple majority in the Senate let alone 60 votes."

Arkansas' own U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton appeared fairly quiet on the president's proposal, maybe because he's advocated for more extensive reductions in legal immigration than what Trump's plan envisions. He and U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., have previously pushed legislation for a merit-based immigration system, but with a concomitant reduction in the numbers of people coming into the country legally.

It seems to me Trump's -- maintaining levels of legal immigration -- is the smarter approach. The U.S. authorizes about 1 million legal, permanent immigrants a year. Reducing the number when there's such demand for the benefits of American life seems counterproductive. It doesn't make sense to me to clamp down on legal immigration numbers at the same time one wants to reduce illegal immigration. Trump's proposal keeps the number of immigrants legally coming to the United States unchanged, but shifts more of the focus of admittance criteria to immigrants with skills or knowledge deemed desirable to the aspirations of this country. As a result, it would diminish the current system's focus on family ties.

Today, about 66 percent of the legal immigrant pool is admitted because of family relationships. About 12 percent are admitted through a skills-based approach. Trump proposes increasing the skills-based immigration to around 57 percent.

Family-related immigration would be cut back to 33 percent, while admissions for humanitarian reasons would be set around 10 percent (now at 22 percent).

Let's say you're restoring an old truck and need help installing the transmission. You mention that to your friend Bob, who has a brother-in-law who knows nothing about truck repairs and a friend who holds a full-time job as a mechanic. When you invite your friend Bob over to help, would it be wiser to suggest he bring his brother-in-law or to encourage him to bring his mechanic friend. Which one is going to be most helpful in advancing the goal of repairing the truck?

As a national policy, immigration ought to be about what this country wants and needs.

Other criticism centered on the fact Trump's proposal ignored major points of contention, such as what to do about children who were brought into the country illegally who have essentially grown up here. It seems political leaders ought to compartmentalize the different categories of immigration-related matters. One ought to be able to work out what our legal system of immigration looks like without having a final answer about what to do with asylum-seekers or the "Dreamers" who want to stay in the only country they've known as their own. These are important issues, but demands for a "comprehensive" set of reforms that deal with every immigration-related issue have so far failed miserably.

Of course, what I think of Trump's plan won't matter. It's being proposed as a presidential campaign matter and will be treated as such by Trump's opponents. And those of us who would like to see some progress on legal immigration and border control won't see any progress.

Commentary on 05/19/2019

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