GOP 'Bill of Love' Immigration Bill To End Chain Migration, Visa Lottery, Catch-and-Release

A group of House Republicans has drafted an ambitious immigration bill which offers a token amnesty in exchange for a deep reform of immigration rules to ease deportations, promote civic integration, end chain migration, end the visa lottery, build a border wall and raise Americans’ wages.

The bill is backed by President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday it should be a “bill of love.”

The bill is described by the authors in a Wall Street Journal article:

A priority of our legislation is to increase the security of the southern border. Our bill would provide $30 billion to build a wall, to invest in new technology, and to improve, modernize and expand ports of entry. It would add boots on the ground: an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 5,000 Customs and Border Protection officers. It would provide for the construction of additional ports of entry and a full implementation of the biometric entry-exit system, while authorizing the National Guard to provide aviation and intelligence support.

The bill was developed by four influential GOP members. They are Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who chairs the judiciary committee, and Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, who chairs the House’s homeland defense committee. The bill was also authored by Rep. Raul Labrador and Rep. Martha McSally.

The article also says the draft law will reform the myriad laws which help migrants use to prevent their deportation:

Our bill would achieve these goals by cracking down on people who overstay their visas, by requiring employers to use the accurate and hugely successful E-Verify system to ensure that they hire only legal workers, and by making it easier to deport aliens who are gang members, who are aggravated felons, who fail to register as sex offenders, or who have multiple DUIs …

Our proposal allows the Justice Department to withhold grants from “sanctuary cities”—jurisdictions that refuse to allow their law-enforcement officers to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, even to the point of preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from entering local jails to take custody of criminal aliens. Sanctuary cities put innocent lives at risk …

The legislation would end “catch and release,” battle asylum fraud and require that unaccompanied minors caught at the border be treated equally regardless of their home country. Together this will ensure that the law no longer tempts minors and their parents to make the dangerous illegal journey to the U.S.—or to line the pockets of cartels that make a business of supporting these journeys.

The bill would raise Americans’ wages by making the E-Verify job-applicant review system mandatory and by halving the annual inflow of 1 million immigrant workers. Those two factors show a clear rejection of the high-immigration/low-wages policies favored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, business groups and many progressive Democrats. The authors write:

Our bill would put an end to chain migration, the process by which citizens and green-card holders can sponsor extended family members for their own green cards (who in turn can eventually sponsor their own extended family members, ad infinitum). It also would stop the Diversity Visa program, which awards green cards by random lottery to people with no ties to the U.S. Neither of these programs prioritizes the skills of people entering the country.

The U.S. is the most generous and welcoming nation in the world, accepting on average more than a million new immigrants every year. But a steady influx of low-skilled labor has depressed wages for workers here at home. That is not putting America first.

In compensation for disconsolate Democrats, the bill offers the most modest of amnesties — renewable work-permits for the 670,000 illegals now registered for President Barack Obama’s DACA program. That would allow the migrants to work, but not to vote. The article says:

Our bill would allow DACA beneficiaries to receive a three-year renewable legal status, codifying the program the right way—by a duly enacted statute. But to be clear, there is no new or special path to citizenship for these individuals in our bill.

The bill rejects the Democrats’ DREAM Act amnesty, which would provide a fast-track citizenship for up to 3.25 million illegals, plus millions of their foreign chain-migration relatives.

Read it all here.

The bill is politically important because it is partially backed by GOP Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who endorse the proposed end of chain migration.

The bill also checkmates efforts by Senate Democrats to push a no-strings amnesty. Few GOP Senators will join the Democrats’ Senate effort if they fear the House will pass a pro-American bill.

The bill shows that the GOP leaders are likely willing to take the issue into the 2018 midterm elections — ensuring that pro-amnesty Democrats will face an uphill battle as President Donald Trump’s combination of immigration-enforcement and tax cuts drives up voters’ paychecks.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has yet to say if he supports the legislation. His decision is key because he decides if a bill will get a vote on the floor, or languish. Also, if Ryan endorses the bill, it is far more likely to become a campaign issue in 2018.

Trump indicated his support of the bill during his Tuesday event at the White House. He said:

Chairman Goodlatte will be submitting a bill over the next two to three days that will cover many of the things.  And, obviously, that will — if it gets passed, it will go to the Senate and we can negotiate and we’ll see how it turns out.  But I feel having the Democrats in with us is absolutely vital because it should be a bipartisan bill.  It should be a bill of love.  Truly, it should be a bill of love, and we can do that.

The bill is likely to be very popular among swing-voting Americans because it offers them real gains in wages and security, while also allowing them to offer a feel-good token amnesty to a small number of migrants. Aside from the amnesty, the various pro-American measures in the bill score high in priority polls.

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.

But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting 1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

The cheap-labor policy has also reduced investment and job creation in many interior states because the coastal cities have a surplus of imported labor. For example, almost 27 percent of zip codes in Missouri had fewer jobs or businesses in 2015 than in 2000, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group. In Kansas, almost 29 percent of zip codes had fewer jobs and businesses in 2015 compared to 2000, which was a two-decade period of massive cheap-labor immigration.

Because of the successful cheap-labor strategy, wages for men have remained flat since 1973, and a large percentage of the nation’s annual income has shifted to investors and away from employees.