Trump and GOP unveil Immigration RAISE Act

[Forty Two]

https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/s354 ... s354is.pdf and http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... mmigration

The most interesting section of the bill was not discussed in the article. There is a provision creating a new non-immigrant classification for the parents of adult citizens. I.e., if a person was born here in the US to illegal alien parents. If the child citizen turns 21, then the child can petition the parent for the non-immigrant visa, which is good for 5 years, which would be extended for successive 5 year terms as long as the child citizen was residing in the US. That would, presumably, allow the parent to then apply for a green card while holding that non-immigrant visa, and then move on to citizenship.

That seems to have not been mentioned in the articles I've read, but it would legalize a huge number of illegals. I.e., we have a large number of illegals who have kids here. Instead of kicking them out, it looks like Trump is giving them a path to legalization, and eventually green card and citizenship.

The new proposed law does away with the loathsome visa lottery, where 50,000 random people per year get green cards handed to them via luck of the draw.

It is also supposed to be reducing family based green card issuances, and increasing merit based visas and green cards based on employment.

[mistermack]

Illegal immigration is the only crime that becomes ok if you get away with it for a while.

That's not an incentive for more people to do it. No, of course it's not.

What about bigamy? Get away with it for a while. Have kids with two wives. Well, of course, that's all right, because you did it a few years ago, and nobody found out. So keep the wives. It's for the kids, you know.

Or murder. Well, nobody noticed. And I have kids to look after. Can't you overlook it, just this once?

[Forty Two]

Illegal immigration is the only crime that becomes ok if you get away with it for a while.

In the US, it's not considered a crime, per se.

That's not an incentive for more people to do it. No, of course it's not.

What about bigamy? Get away with it for a while. Have kids with two wives. Well, of course, that's all right, because you did it a few years ago, and nobody found out. So keep the wives. It's for the kids, you know.

Or murder. Well, nobody noticed. And I have kids to look after. Can't you overlook it, just this once?

Well, indeed, the difficulty with US immigration is that it was traditionally very open. We have never been a "where are your papers?" type of country. Unfortunately, the protection of only having 2 borders, and one with Canada, and the other rather inhospitable, with a level of illegal immigration that didn't effect us much, is all but over. The volume of illegal immigration is too much to sustain.

But the fundamentals on which the US is based makes it hard to go the Dutchy route, requiring everyone to have numbers and cards and and things and to have centralized databases with cops tapping into it to identify people. In the US, we've always had a right to be let alone. If you are doing something wrong, then the cops should attend to you. Failing that, they can fuck off. You don't have to answer their questions. You don't have to carry identification (unless driving), and you don't have show your immigration papers to cops. Immigration was considered a largely administrative function, done by letters and notices to appear at hearings, and issuance of administrative orders, and only eventually would scofflaws be attended to. I'm going to miss the old days when people had the right to be let alone.