In a pair of articles for The Hill in January, the demographer Joseph Chamie (formerly of the United Nations Population Division) provides a road map for how the Biden-Harris administration and Congress might unite the nation around immigration reform.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has re-introduced the Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act that would require all employers in the United States to begin using E-Verify for all employers within 1 year. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) has introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
Mandating E-Verify for all employers is NumbersUSA's top priority in deterring future illegal immigration.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) unveiled an immigration proposal today that would grant amnesty to illegal aliens and increase the number of foreign workers imported each year. The proposal also attempts to appeal to Pres. Trump's desire to build a border wall by including a boost for border security funding.
When Democrats lost control of the House in 2010, a number of 'Blue Dog' Democrats who had earned B-grades or better through our immigration-reduction grade cards lost their seats. Since then, the Party has moved more and more towards supporting an expansion of legal immigration and less enforcement. Many of the newly elected Democrats will fill seats previously held by those 'Blue Dogs', but the lion's share of the incoming freshmen appear to be more in line with the national Party.
Under pressure from Dreamer groups, the House Minority Leader says the goal is to pass a legalization without any measures to control illegal immigration and the Senate Minority Leader says that the very measure he considers necessary to discourage illegal immigration must not be included in any deal.
The immigration section of 2016 Republican Platform calls for a system that serves the national interest of the United States, focuses on protecting the American worker, opposes amnesty for illegal aliens, and promotes E-Verify, interior enforcement, and border security. The Party's platform, approved on Monday, states that immigration "must protect American working families and their wages, for citizens and legal immigrants alike, in a way that will improve the economy."
My goodness, there has been a flurry of immigration posturing and positioning since we last revised our Ratings of the Presidential candidates in 10 categories and calculated overall Worker-Protection Immigration Grades!
We've just finished our regular Grading Committee meeting (early Friday afternoon) here at NumbersUSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. We've sifted through the charges and counter-charges and focused on what the candidates are saying that really address what they specifically are promising to do about immigration policies.
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has signed HB 318, which expands on the state's existing mandatory E-Verify law and forbids local jurisdictions from passing sanctuary policies. The state legislature took action on the bill after several high-profile crimes occurred in sanctuary cities over the summer.
E-Verify is so popular that PolitiFact was unable to find any poll in which an "overwhelming majority of people" did not support the free online workplace verification system. Most Americans want citizens and legal immigrants already here to get priority for U.S.