It’s clear that the American public is fed up with the current immigration system, and there have been a lot of ideas and proposals floated around that attempt to fix the issue. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) penned an op-ed in the New York Times with a perfect response to all of those who appear content with the current immigration crisis.
Cheap immigrant labor pads the pockets of the wealthy while ensuring the American dream is “just out of reach.” Critics say that closing the border and ending cheap foreign labor will “force employers to add benefits and improve workplace conditions to attract workers already here.” And according to Senator Cotton, that is exactly what should happen.
He states that higher wages, better benefits, and more security for American workers are the reason immigration reform is so important. Immigration policy should focus “less on the most powerful and more on everyone else.”
In his piece, he talks about wages and the law of supply and demand. With such vast numbers of workers, including an estimated 12 million illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S. and the one million legal immigrants the U.S. accepts annually, already low wages are continuing to plummet. Real wages for American citizens with and without high school diplomas have been declining since the 1970s, which Senator Cotton says is exacerbated by mass immigration and a surplus of labor.
To fix this problem, Cotton says the country needs secure borders, and the U.S. must decide who and how many can cross that border, keeping the American citizens’ best interests in mind. Today, these best interests would entail a large reduction in legal immigration and a focus on “ultra-high-skill immigrants,” though tomorrow it could be something else. A major flaw in our immigration policy is that it doesn’t evolve to fit the needs of the American people; the last time Congress substantially reformed the immigration system was a half-century ago.
Cotton proposes a policy that gives priority to language skills, education, and work experience which would allow immigrants like doctors to work in rural areas and not push down the working-class wages. He goes on to note that some critics call this “nativism” or “xenophobia,” but it actually gives immigrants who recently arrived to the U.S. a better chance at assimilation, finding a stable job, and achieving the American Dream.
17 Comments
Sen Cotton you can get the people back to work. With Clinton as Gov the ILLEGALS as chicken pluckers. And the AMERICANS LOST THIER JOBS. I know I drove truck and hauled meat for a lot of years.
Sane representation like Sen. Cotton and other true reformers, are the only cure for our warp minded government that has blatantly ignored the harm they’ve created.
Where does Sen. Cotton get off.? E-Verify was promised in 1986 (I guess Cotton was in panties then) Congress has refused to protect American workers………….and never passed it ………..or Child birth legislation…………which would require one parent to be a U.S. citizen for a child to be an American
I agree with Senator Cotton. Illegal immigration has HURT us who are natural born citizens. This has to stop!
I think there should be special policy or law for those folks who obtain the Visa as student/H1/L1. They are working illegally and do not go back.
Employer sanctions. PERIOD. I am so sick and tired of mindless Americans buying into this fantasy that border security or a “wall” is going to fix anything. We need to get rid of the incentives FIRST, then fix the border.
There’s no one answer. E-verify, sanctions on employers who willfully ignore the law, fines or jail time for illegals who steal SS numbers, anything to make it harder for them to stay here and work. And a wall or fence is very much going to fix a lot of things. Drug gangs don’t care about jobs or anything else but bringing drugs in. That needs to be stopped at the border because a lot of the violence in our cities is drug related. Plus a lot of illegals work under the table. They need to be stopped before they enter.
LM says how true that is, but it is only the beginning, we need to stop the magnet, we need to end birthright citizen ship, which other civilized countries did long ago, end chain migration, and mandate E-Verify. Then we must build that wall higher and better than the great wall of China. Let it be know as the Great American Wall.
Anchor babies must be stopped, it was not intended by the Founders. E-Verify yes The wall too. Visa overstays too, do it all!
Use E-verify, ( not only have it) AMAZON has it, never use it, that’s how You get JEFF BEZOS, 25% of workers in those FULLFILLMENT centers like Middletown , Delaware are very illegal. I have been there over 2 years. That’s when We start making more money, a fair wage.
Amazon Warehouses in Seattle
Pay lower slave rate pay to stand on your feet all day and limited or no bathroom breaks….we simultaneously outsourced like $40/50/hr Boeing Parts/engineering/manufacturing Fabrication jobs to Japan from Seattle [America’s aerospace equivalent of Detroit IOWs]. It was called Auburn Fabrication and had many valley high paid subcontractors like Flow Systems [now Mor Furniture]. 95% of the life cycle costs of the 737/787/67/747 are mostly Japanese. We taught them all our Boeing Aircraft Company (BAC) secret processes. Japan will now claim they invented them now BTW.
This occurred in stealth the last couple decades….the media and the Democrats/Republicans hid it from us. Where’s the real Democrats we had that kept jobs in Seattle….like Scoop Jackson??????
Boeing= Organized Crime.
We’re hearing a lot about changing the electoral college. First let’s talk about birthright citizenship. The authors of the 14th amendment would no doubt have been shocked if someone suggested that children would become citizens because of the illegal acts of their parents. The 14th was passed immediately after the Civil War to insure that slaves and their children were citizens.
The controlling Supreme Court decision, Wong Kim Ark in 1898, which declared him a citizen, relied heavily on the facts that they spelled out in the final paragraph of the decision. They noted that his parents were long time established residents of California and were engaged in business there, what we now call permanent residents. The fact that their reasoning relied so heavily on those things is evidence that they would not have given their approval to crossing the border illegally or arriving on a plane two days before and thus making their children citizens. Every presidential election there are a couple million more voters because of birthright citizenship and they vote Democratic 4 to 1.
There is also the fact that there is widespread proof of voter fraud. The Michigan recount showed a large amount of precincts in Detroit where votes outnumbered the voters who had signed the books. But if you suggest secure ID the Democrats pull the race card. Why should a legal voter’s vote be negated by cheating.
In St. Louis a local primary this year had so many bogus absentee ballots that a judge ordered a new election that the “loser” in the first election then won by a considerable margin. Plus there are numerous examples where non citizens not only registered to vote but cast ballots. Of course the fake media insists that none of these things actually occur, but they are well documented. So the electoral college discussion takes a back seat to the stacked deck and double dealing on the other side.
To be specific, the local primary in St. Louis was for Missouri House District 78. After losing by less than a hundred votes in the initial vote, challenger Bruce Franks beat incumbent Penny Hubbard by 3 to 1 in the special election. This is only one of many examples of voter fraud in that city. But the national press suppresses it.
Not quite accurate …. Did you live in that era? Just African Americans ….. With your concept you would have never been an American n your family sent back
What’s not accurate? Fact: The cause of the 14th amendment was the Civil War and citizenship for slaves. Fact: My family on both sides came here legally in the early and mid 19th century, checked in and registered with the authorities and were given permission to be here as permanent residents. And did you ” live in that era “? If not then how come you have an opinion, since according to you that’s the only way to have one.
Amnesty’s Real Meaning
I am greedy and selfish…
What is Cotton’s itemized list?