Congress Mulls ‘Immigration in the National Interest’ Plan

A bill was introduced in the U.S. House last week that would cut legal immigration to increase wages in the United States and end low-skilled chain migration.

The ‘Immigration in the National Interest Act’ by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is the House version of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue’s (R-GA) RAISE Act, which was endorsed and touted by President Trump as the best way to protect America’s blue-collar workforce, while also ending the current system of more than 1.5 million immigrant admissions to the U.S. every year.

Under the Immigration in the National Interest Act, the bill promises to:

• The U.S. would admit no more than 500,000 legal immigrants a year
• The current low-skilled legal immigration system would be replaced by a merit-based system
• Family chain migration would be ended
• Skilled immigrants with English language skills would be given priority

Smith additionally announced the introduction of E-Verify legislation that would mandate all businesses in the U.S. screen workers to certify that illegal aliens are not hired.

“The bill protects the rights of workers and employers by requiring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to issue a final determination within 10 working days of the date the employee receives a tentative non-confirmation,” Smith said in a statement. “The average resolution time is two and a half days.”

“The E-Verify program is free and easy to use,” Smith continued. “Employers can even access it from a smartphone.  It quickly confirms 99.8 percent of work-eligible employees and takes less than two minutes to use.”

Not only does Trump support the merit-based, legal immigration-cutting legislation now pending in both the House and Senate, but a majority of Americans support the plans as well.

As Breitbart News reported, nearly 50 percent of American likely voters want to see legal immigration reduced. Meanwhile, non-Republican Trump voters in states like Ohio are even more supportive of the cuts to legal immigration, with 74 percent supporting the plans, as Breitbart Texas reported.

Both the Immigration in the National Interest Act and the RAISE Act revive a longstanding effort by immigration patriot and Civil Rights leader Barbara Jordan, who famously asked Congress in the 1990’s to cut legal immigration in half, as she cited the negative impact mass immigration has specifically on blue-collar U.S. workers and African-Americans.

“When immigrants are less-educated and less-skilled, they may pose economic hardships for the most vulnerable of Americans, particularly for those who are unemployed or underemployed,” Jordan said in a 1995 press conference on the findings of the ‘Jordan Commission’ which reviewed the legal immigration system.

“The Commission sees no justification for the continued entry of unskilled foreign workers unless the rationale for their admission otherwise serves a significant national interest, as does the admission of nuclear family members and refugees,” Jordan said.

Smith introduced nearly the exact same legal immigration-cutting legislation in 1995 to follow up on the recommendations by the Jordan Commission.

Under that legislation, legal immigration would have been cut down to 535,000 legal immigrants a year, with a cap of refugees per year set at 50,000.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.