As the White House prepares a framework for immigration reform to be released Monday, there's talk again of a merit-based system.
The White House promises a fix for Dreamers, but Texas Sen. John Cornyn also suggested we be more picky about who we let in.
“Maybe we assign some of those visas to merit-based immigration, people who graduated with skills that we need here in the United States, including the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math,” Cornyn said on the Senate Floor this week.
Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies says a merit-based system could have helped avoid last year's attacks in the Big Apple.
“If you have a system that picks people based on high levels of skill, high levels of education, you’re just going to be a lot less likely to get the kind of people who did these two terrorist attacks in New York,” he says.
“Why do we have a policy that selects people literally at random through a lottery from pretty much anybody in the world with very minimal standards? The visa lottery just needs to be abolished, but the president can’t do that on his own.”
While they're at it, Krikorian suggests tossing chain migration in the trash.
Sen. Cornyn says whatever they do; lawmakers must not lose sight of existing U.S. citizens.
“We need to correspondingly assure the American people that we’re actually serious about border security and enforcing our laws,” he said.
President Trump continues to push for funding a massive border wall.