Immigration: Give Me Your Leisured, Wealthy, English-Speaking Elites; No More Shitholes

Decameron

"We will replace the existing green card categories with a new visa, the 'Build America' visa…Like Canada and so many other modern countries, we’ll create an easy to navigate points-based selection system. You'll get more points for being a younger worker…. You'll get more points for having a valuable skill, an offer of employment, an advanced education or a plan to create jobs."

“Only 12 percent of legal immigrants are selected based on skill or based on merit. In countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — and others — that number is closer to 60 and even 70 and 75 percent, in some cases.”

“The biggest change we make is to increase the proportion of highly skilled immigration from 12 percent to 57 percent, and we’d like to even see if we can go higher.”

“Finally, to promote integration, assimilation, and national unity, future immigrants will be required to learn English and to pass a civics exam prior to admission.”

--Donald Trump, May 16, 2019

A well-informed Australian political consultant described his country’s immigration policy, which Trump cited yesterday as a model for the US. Succinctly put, the practice is “jail the needy,” and sell entry and residence in the country to the wealthy. “Australian residency is for sale,” he said. Full Stop.

On this side of the Pacific a DC analyst quipped that under the “57% highly educated with high grades, financial means, knowledge of English, and ability to pass an American civics test” rule, probably the majority of those qualifying and wanting to come to the US are Chinese. (Meanwhile, a lot of today’s American native-born high school seniors might find a civics test quite challenging.)

Another thing. Some of the wealthiest people in the world are dope traffickers and money launderers. Surely they could meet the qualifications needed to be welcomed into the United States as members of Trump’s “57%,” even if a few records from their home countries have to be sanitized. Sending in their offspring has been underway for some time.

The immigration speech was long on theatrics, short on details. There was no draft legislation, no endorsement of specific Republican legislation that’s already been introduced. Some politicians were present, but Trump only welcomed (by first name only) the old Lady from South Carolina and one other.

Who’s eligible to come in? People with money, education, a non-entry level job offer, the ability to speak English, and who've qualified by passing a “civics” test.  The President seeks to end entry based on sponsorship by a family member in order to promote "diversity."  (Of the 1.1 million green cards awarded in 2017, more than 700,000 were Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Asians and Africans. )

Who’s eligible to stay? There won’t be any change in the number of green cards that are awarded annually. There are 1.1 million permanent residencies awarded each year, but the criteria will change, Trump said. Points-based Merit System: youth, money, skills, language literacy, higher education. Every country’s dream, but those demands probably would have excluded many 19^th and 20^th century forbearers of today’s successful citizens who actually did "make America great."
            Asylum seekers will be seriously screened. No more “fake” claims of asylum. Will some asylum grants be revoked?

Who’s “Inadmissible” ? All criminals are inadmissible.

Who’s Forgotten? Not mentioned were the 700,000 DACA children and young adults who are still in the United States as illegals (having been brought to the United States as children without visas) but given special status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Trump ended in 2017. The status of these people, often referred to as the “Dreamers,” is in limbo, and still under various court rulings No new DACA actions have been allowed since 2017.

Trump attacked the current, long-standing policy of allowing family members of established residents and citizens of the United States to get entry visas. Whether the numbers of family-sponsored visas will be reduced or whittled down to nothing remains to be seen.  Family sponsorship is apparently considered a serious factor that limits "diversity."

“The Wall” was touted as a great victory and fait accompli, well on its way. No mention of the funding for completing the wall. The expulsion of many thousands of criminal immigrants was also cited as a great victory and ongoing priority.

Within hours, the plan—attributed to The Son-In-Law—was being pronounced DOA. Trump himself said as much in his speech. If the Democrats don’t see the beauty of his Build America immigration plan, then the policy will have to wait until the 2020 election when his party will control the House, Senate, and of course, the White House. It’s only “sixteen months” away, Trump said.

Comments

[rjj]

What is to be done with the surplus--and indigent-- Made in America creatives who believe merit and performance standards are discriminatory. Families will need some sort of program to help with their housing/upkeep.

[turcopolier]

Decameron

The Washpost commented favorably today on Trump's legal immigration reform. Legal immigrants are presently screened against admission for criminal pasts.

[Norbert M Salamon]

The Trump proposal is very similar to current Canada modus operandi including the suspicion that money laundering is distinct possibility/fact at least in the so called "investor" class.

[Dave Schuler]

A lot of things have changed since 1883. One of them is that the marginal productivity of unskilled labor isn't increasing any more.

How many of today's migrants would come so that they could homestead undeveloped public lands? At a first approximation my estimate would be none.

[Fred]

"Who’s Forgotten?

Trayon Martin, Freddie Grey, Eric Garner, the kids from Covington and all like them. Immigrant über alles! Just why does America need 1 million people per year from somewhere else? Why should native born Americans have to compete with 1 million more people every year? That will be good for wages? For whom, the guy who makes 400,000,000 a year while still being in elected office? His millionaire son in law?

To quote Trump "This plan was not developed, I'm sorry to say, by politicians." No, it was put together by a snake oil salesman married to daddy's girl and the usual suspects in the corporate world. (link below to the immigration speech and his 'pledge to America's workers').
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/16/watch_live_president_trump_expected_to_unveil_new_immigration_plan.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/pledge-to-americas-workers/

You'll note from the 'pledge' Ford has pledged 55,000 "new opportunities". This at the same time it is laying off high wage salaried employees. The next involuntary cuts are due May21st. GM promises 10,975? Hey Donald, is that the same GM that laid off all those people at Lordstown Plant, or is that 'promise' the bait and switch of the same jobs at the same plant in exchange for some tax breaks? https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/03/17/president-trump-attacks-gm-uaw-over-plans-close-lordstown-plant/3195729002/
Apple has at least 10,000 H1B visa holders now. Ditto Microsoft. Why haven't they raised wages or paid tuition for curent employees to get the skills needed rather than require more visas? I'm sure Ivanka asked that real tough question.

...."the current immigration rules allow foreign workers to substitute for American seeking entry level jobs. So foreign workers are coming in and they are taking the jobs that would normally go to American workers."... "Priority will also be given to higher wage workers ensuring we never undercut American labor. "
Because competetion never lowers prices paid for employees? Is that what you learned at Wharton? So now college graduates will get a taste of competition with immigrants. Or they'll get to blame Orange Man for the competition they've been facing for years but the likes of Tom Donohue, CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, kept telling them was for thier own benefit. With a legalized million new higher wage employees competing against you you can kiss your promotion opportunity goodbye. Just ask the thousands layed off by IBM and others like it so they could be replaced by lower wage employees.

"Pledge to America's Workers" my ass. The only 'blue collar' name on there is an executive with the AFL-CIO. What a crock of crap. https://www.whitehouse.gov/pledge-to-americas-workers/

[turcopolier]

I don't see anything wrong with the president's proposal. Legal immigration status and asylum appeals are quite different things. I don't have a dog in this fight. My ancestors all came to N. America well before there were any immigration controls. An increase in the number (%) of merit based awards of immigrant status seems reasonable to me.

[Harlan Easley]

Couldn't agree more. Trump is a fraud. Where are all these magical jobs appearing? It certainly isn't manufacturing. The increase has been modest but still below 2007 overall numbers substantially. Not only a 1,000,000 legal immigrants but also a 1,000,000 illegal immigrants a year. The math just doesn't add up. A thousand illegal economic migrants will be deposited in Palm Beach County starting now and every month to eternity.

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20190516/government-to-send-immigrants-from-border-to-pb-county

Even the bluest of counties are protesting. To me poverty equals crime. The US job machine is a mirage in my opinion or at a minimum no way capable of producing decent jobs to cover the influx of massive legal and illegal immigration at the current rate. The 90s were a better time of growth regardless what the statistics say. I can make up a unemployment figure out of thin air like they do. I don't believe it. Maybe I have a blind spot but I could easily make a strong statistical argument that rose glasses dominate in this area.

I wish man was built different but we ain't. Man's brain hasn't evolved too far from the cave. He tends to stick with his own kind. White with white, black with black, and brown with brown. How many successful multi-ethnic countries by race has there been in the history of the world? I haven't found any and don't say the United States because we are just now entering the experiment stage.

There are another 3 - 5 billion people who would like to come here. Is everybody willing to house them in your own communities and households. If not it is just hypocrisy. We can't have massive deindustrialization and massive illegal immigration and legal immigration. It just doesn't add up.

[Fred]

Harlan,

There are plenty of manufacturing jobs in the Midwest: Cincinnati, Lima,Dayton and thats just the I 75 corridor. Chattanooga and Nashville and those are only a few of the places I've either worked or interviewed over the past six months. The people Trump proposes to allow in have degrees but not the trades skills needed for industrial production work. Meeting apple and Microsoft's H-B visa demands is not going to help our own college graduates.

"How many successful multi-ethnic countries...."
Ours, the United States of America. It takes time for a million people to truly assimilate and that isn't being considered in this plan.

[NarcoRepublican]

Having resisted previously commenting on this issue - my experience basically devolves to "Russians" - I am leaving this here, submitted for your consideration:

I have never been to Russia. Instead, Russia came to me. In 1990, some 25,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact scientist- and engineering-PhDs came to the United States. I was tenure-track faculty in a biophysics department in a large Midwestern metropolitan medical school. The department had 8 tenured faculty (PIs), we got 20 of them, and 4 were in my lab. I will say right off that these people were top-rate scientists -- I was studying the fundamental mechanisms of how influenza virus infects cells using a model system of membrane fusion, and the Russians had a novel theory of how the shape dynamics of membrane-constituent lipid molecules. I think that during the 8 years of living/working together, we solved that problem.

The downside, however, was that the influx of that many talented people completely killed the science job market. Together with diminished govt funding of research and universities in general, the ramp-up in admin jobs necessary for schools to comply with ever-increasing regulation, and the concomitant decrease in tenured faculty slots, the decline in Americans enrolling and completing science and engineering education programs was precipitous. I think President Bush Sr. cooked up the plan with Gorbachev as a way to 'relieve pressure' on the latter from a restless intelligentsia and to address all the 'too few scientists' fears lamented in the 1983 "Nation at Risk" report. In any case, I recall the first instances of 'Russian trolling' on the listservs of the time. On biophysics, in particular, some guy in Texas was complaining about Russians taking all the jobs and he was immediately trounced by Russians denying that was the case. But it was the case.

Anyway, with all the recent insanity surrounding Russia, all the talk (yak, really) about Russian interference leads me to conclude that resistance is futile -- we were penetrated very well back in the 90s and those people are in very critical positions today. I once asked my Armenian post-doc if he knew anyone who went into the KGB from his classes at Moscow State. He said no. I pressed on -- 'really? I thought the KGB was everywhere in the USSR'. Eventually he admitted he maybe knew one. All the Russians denied having diminished liberties in the USSR, when I asked about whether they felt freer in America. One might think that they were all vetted very well before they were allowed to enter the US. One would be wrong. Most of them were admitted on J-1 non-immigrant visas, but the 1992 Act enabled expedited application for a green card after 2 years. Turns out that the State Department was the first to examine them critically from the symbols on their passport covers -- my Armenian post-doc had been a top officer in the Komsomol & Young Pioneers and served as a corporal during the Afghan war.

His friend, a Ukrainian post-doc in another lab, came from Kharkov, was educated at Bogomolets Medical University (where the calcium current through nerve membranes necessary for synaptic transmission was discovered) and was a major in the Soviet Space Army. He brought lots of photos of Proton and Energia rockets and I think part of his job was to drum up more customers. In any case, these two burned the Crimean independence referendum into my mind. It was Monday, January 21, 1991. I walked into my lab office, and the Ukrainian was sitting in my desk chair with the New York Times up and the Armenian was standing over reading the front page. 'What's up?", I asked. 'Crimea declared independence yesterday', they replied. 'What does that mean?', I asked. 'We don't know' was the reply. So I figure that the March 16, 2014 referendum (declared "illegal" by those opposed to democracy) was the Crimeans saying they meant it in 1991. Yay Crimeans.

So, back to immigration. We also got a refusenik (Soviet Jew denied an exit visa) in 1987. This guy had invented a 3rd-order model of muscles/tendons/bones of the ankle joint and invented a computer program that could diagnose plantar flexion deficits with a platform built from the model. When he had taken up Sakharov's challenge to make aliyah, he was stripped of his job at Moscow State and lost his apartment. He and his family lived for 5 years in a tent on the shore of the Black Sea while he aided a Crimean archaeologist in the Chersonesus dig. What made him angry was that the PI never put his name on any of the resulting papers. He is now chairman of the rehab/physical therapy department at a state medical school here in the US.

So, if Trump's program is made to work out, we may be in store for an influx of tremendous talent, especially if Russian, although I somehow doubt the popularity of that. (The Chinese are good, but not comparable, since they are just getting started even though we have been tendering their job applications since 1979). However, just remember that there is a finite number of jobs for them, and they will both decrease that number as well as the compensation. Maybe scientists make too much money, as Greenspan once told a Congressional committee. I thin scientists need to make their own money.

Thank you.

[rho]

These so-called "creatives" could be sent to countries like Nicaragua to help them with what they need most badly: Feminism and gender diversity.

[Morongobill]

What I would like to see happen is letting people in who want to assimilate into and learn to be part of American culture. Folks are sick and tired of seeing and hearing the current practice of recreating your old homeland with all its religious and societal problems here. And yes, we don't need all this unskilled labor that has been coming here for decades and that has crushed the wages of many citizens here.

You know I grew up in the deep south and I remember seeing black and white men working construction, all kinds of jobs. Out here in California, most construction trades are dominated by latinos, and have been for at least 20 years. The drywall trade which used to be a high skill and paid career, now is dominated by the latinos who would work cheap, really cheap. Not knocking latinos, I live in a house chock full with them(my girlfriend's extended family.)

So count me in with the president's proposal and my guess is I'm joined by most of his base. Bringing in folks that already speak English and have a job offer, maybe with money of their own- what's not to like? We're going to get immigrants anyway, why not a better class of them?

[rjj]

Instead, Russia came to me. In 1990 .... the influx of that many talented people completely killed the science job market.

But "American science" is largely a product of the influx of Europeans [who came to US] throughout the 20th century.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQP_CKXP8TdRljI62qYILg83kXCfrQByF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf13v0OEdt8&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFyxf1sRqxZgh-06WFw4zgPj

[Joanna]

old microbiologist, is that you. Or some type of alter ego?

more randomly:

how influenza virus infects cells using a model system of membrane fusion, and the Russians had a novel theory of how the shape dynamics of membrane-constituent lipid molecules.

on how to shape?

If not there may still be something missing. No?

[The Twisted Genius]

That great exodus of Russian scientists in the early 1990s was a deliberate policy implemented by the former Soviet and Russian academy of Sciences. They sent an open letter to universities and research institutes worldwide begging them to take in their scientists until the scientific and research infrastructure of the old Academy of Sciences could be rebuilt following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The goal was to preserve the cream of the scientific community abroad rather than forcing them into taking non-scientific jobs home in order to survive. They would return once conditions improved.
Research institutes throughout Western Europe became filled with Russian and other former Soviet scientists. Russian became a primary language in many of those institutes. I saw this myself as I prowled the halls of those institutes as a US Army case officer. It was a golden age for HUMINT.

[Harlan Easley]

Anecdotal observations are not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.

The United States had 17,302,000 million manufacturing jobs in 2000. As of April 2019 the estimated manufacturing jobs are 12,838,000.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true

2000 US Population 281,000,000, 2019 US Population 328,000,000. So 47,000,000 million more people and 4,500,000 million less manufacturing jobs. The numbers don't add up.

Manufacturing jobs support service jobs. No manufacturing economy no local service shops such as dry cleaners or restaurants supporting the workers. The evidence is the Rust Belt. Or Detroit. Gone.

In 2000, the total population via census was 281,421,906 which 75% where white, 12% black, and 12% hispanic which is a majority ethnic country in my opinion.

I consider the year 2000 to be really the beginning of the experiment of a true multi-ethnic country in the United States defined as large and equal populations of different races. So we will see.

But adding millions of illegal and legal immigrants regardless if they are eliminating IBM jobs for US Citizens or eliminating blue collar jobs for US Citizens like they have in my industry equals disaster in my opinion. Because large swaths of our country have been deindustrialized.

If our manufacturing employment had increased from 17,000,000 to 27,000,000 I would feel different. Smarter people than me tell me it's basically a service economy or go pound sand.

[jdledell]

I am conflicted on the subject of immigration. My father, who grew up in Aix en Provence France and along with several other of my relatives booked passage on a cargo ship out of Marseille, France bound for NYC in 1938. They simply walked off the boat with the crew and disappeared into the crowds - no papers or documents. He had no obvious skills having worked in my Grandfather's Dry Goods store in Aix En Provence. He then moved to Minneapolis where he had been told there were lots of opportunities.

His only skill had been driving a big truck between the Marseilles shipyard and the store in Aix en Provence France. He slowly learned English but living in the land of Norwegians and Swedes, his English always had scattered references to other languages incorporated into it. He used his skill of driving Trucks to get a job as a Greyhound bus driver, a job he had for the rest of his life. He worked hard his entire life and played by the rules.

So being the son of an "illegal" immigrant, I am grateful for the chance to live in America. I am also grateful for my son, Jason, who married a woman from Mongolia who he met doing graduate work at Keio University in Tokyo.She moved to the U.S. on a fiance visa and became a green card holder and eventually a U.S. Citizen.

In spite of the personal interactions with immigraion, I think we need comprehensive reform. One that will supply a steady but limited influx of immigrants and makes permanent the DACA people. I dislike the retrictive conditions Trump wishes to impose but wish there was a way to measure Hard Working, go getter, type personalities who will be just as valuable to our future as those with money.

Immigration is a difficult issue for America to handle but we won't solve it by demagouging the "others". I have found that there are more similarities than differences between myself and "other humans" and that any differences that exist just make Life more interesting.

[catherine]

Well the US middle class better gear up for the coming competition with off shore geniuses for jobs.
I don't like it.
Not that a number of Americans don't need a nudge to be more ambitious about education and careers....and call me old fashioned but this doesnt comport with America as a refuge for the truly oppressed.

[turcopolier]

Catherine - Trump's proposal is not about asylum seekers. It is about non-asylum people wishing to immigrate to the US.

[catherine]

''Meeting apple and Microsoft's H-B visa demands is not going to help our own college graduates. ''

Agree.

[We will be Ok]

All countries in the world are populated by immigrants, it is just a matter of time scale. Modern humans emigrated from Africa in several waves and displaced Neanderthals and Denisovans in Europe and Asia. The only unique thing about the US is that the migration happened recently. We should separate the romantic issue about immigration from the economic issue of labor. In our economic system, labor is a commodity to be bought and sold. "Open" door migration policy does not help those people who are already in the US nor those people who want to come here. First, an increase in the supply of labor, skilled and unskilled, will reduce its cost, ie, the salaries of both resident and newcomer workers. US is already overproducing college educated workers. Second, it will degrade education of children of both resident and foreign workers further -- why bother educate residents if one can easily access foreigners. Third, the US tech edge will become non-existent as many of those who come here will take their skills back to their home countries to start competing companies or, even if they remain in the US, will have no loyalty to the place. How does the current administration even square its clampdown on students from China with increasing educated immigration?

[NarcoRepublican]

Not me. The last part of the sentence should read "the Russians had a novel theory of how the shape dynamics of membrane-constituent lipid molecules could provide a mechanism for driving membrane fusion." Thank you for reading and pointing my omission out. A case of brain freeze.

[The Twisted Genius]

jdledell, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one here with an illegal immigrant in the family. My grandparents passed through Ellis Island, but I had a cousin who stayed in Lithuania until the Lithuanian Freedom Army demobilized in 1953. He made his way through the Iron Curtain, across Europe and into the States without passing through any border controls. He even brought his cut down Mosin Nagant carbine with him. I learned to shoot with that thing.

As Colonel Lang pointed out several times, the legal immigration issue is separate from the asylum problem now confronting us. I think it is reasonable to slow legal immigration while we are dealing with asylum seekers. I think the vast majority of Central American asylum seekers have passed through a kind of selection course by deciding to make the journey to our border and make their way through a tough and dangerous journey. People with that kind of gumption built this country.

[MP98]

"We can't have massive deindustrialization and massive illegal immigration and legal immigration. It just doesn't add up."
And especially doesn't compute when you bring unlimited immigrants into a welfare state.

[turcopolier]

jdledell

You are really quite sanctimonious about immigration in spite of the fact that we took your family in and have a family history of tribal murder in Palestine. and seem to imagine that you are an authorized advocate for some sort of earthly paradise in North America. I cannot claim like you and TTG to be descended from illegals. My 17th Century ancestors in New England were good at; preaching Puritan sermons. making money and killing Indians. We are quite good at that, but that is a lot like your relatives killing and oppressing Palestinians. Maybe you should be a neocon. They, too, hope fr an earthly paradise. It is somewhat like AOC or Bernie's view of paradise in that it is derived ultimately from the heritage of the Trots. Bernie and AOC want to build socialism in this country as a prelude to the world and the neocons want the world NOW! NOW! Your father was a smart man. He knew when to leave Europe. My now long dead doctor Les Upton (anglicized from Ungar) was born in the Siebenburgen in Transylvania. Hungarian was his first language. His father was a jeweler who moved to the States (New York City) in the early '30s and set up shop making jewelry. Yes, They were Jews. Les learnt English and graduated high school in a year. The Hungarian embassy in DC knew his father somehow and offered Les a medical scholarship at a famous university in Hungary. His first year there was pretty good but after that things went steadily down hill as the Green Arrows grew in numbers and power. He finally decided to leave and went on a tour of the Pale of Settlement visiting all his relatives and telling them to leave. Few did and the rest died in Sobibor, etc. Les worked his way to Cherbourg where the US consul gave him travel documents and found him a berth as a dishwasher on a US freighter bound for New York. His pay was a US dime which his father set in gold as a ring. Les continued in various medical schools actually working as a waiter in NY City while doing so. That is supposed to be impossible to do. By WW2 he had a medical license and tried to join the US Navy but they wouldn't have him because they did not want Jewish doctors. The US Army did want Jewish doctors and he became George Marshall's personal attending physician. He subsequently was the personal physician for nine Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. By accident he started treating me when, as a Lt., I happened to be in Washington for a few days and was ill and he treated me whenever I was here until he died twenty years ago. I preached the eulogy at his funeral.He believed very strongly in the essential goodness of the US unlike many of those here on SST who whine and seek to find fault with anything we do. The most irritating are people like a particular idiot who has lurked here for years writing fairly reasonable things and then suddenly leaping from ambush to write that I am an anachronistic fool who thinks that the CSA will rise again and that I also think Marshall was a dupe of the Communists. I have not, of course, ever said or thought anything like that. In typical hasbara fashion these assaults are intended to wound in the vain hope that I will desist from SST. Are you just another kind of hasbara, albeit a more sophisticated one?

[turcopolier]

TTG- If they make it across the border several time after starting from their original start points I might agree with you. But, then, the traffickers are now busing them up to undefended parts of the border and shooing them across. That takes some of the "Running Man" sport out of the game.