Trump’s Legal Immigration Makeover: Less is Better



The Washington Post reports that President Donald Trump is “changing the face of legal immigration.” It’s a minor makeover, at best.

The number of people receiving visas to move permanently to the United States is on pace to drop 12 percent in Trump’s first two years in office, according to State Department data.

These decreases represent a gentle shift away from the Obama era, when immigrant visas jumped 33 percent, surging to 617,752 in fiscal 2016.

“The history of immigration policy in the United States is one of ebbs and flows,” a White House official told the Post. “Yet in recent years, the U.S. has [had]record immigration without any consideration of this influx’s impact on American workers or wages.”

There hasn’t been much ebbing lately. It’s been pretty much flowing at greater and greater rates for the past 40 years.

New lawful permanent residents (green-card holders) soared from 297,000 in 1965 to an average of about 1 million each year since the mid-2000s. The foreign-born population rose from 9.6 million to 45 million in 2015, according to the Pew Research Center.

Despite alarmist rhetoric from the open-borders lobby, the Trump administration will still be issuing more immigrant visas than Obama did in earlier years of his presidency.

While visas granted to people from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, Haiti, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Pakistan and Afghanistan have declined under Trump, among the 10 countries that send the highest number of immigrants, only El Salvador is projected to receive more visas: an increase of 17 percent.

The top 10 sending countries, which have unfairly benefited from family chain migration, account for about 60 percent of all green cards. Correcting that imbalance will inevitably affect those who have benefited from it disproportionally.

The Post noted that “visa backlogs and processing times are so extensive that even a significant drop in applicants is unlikely to put a major dent in the same year’s immigrant visa issuances.”

Immigration enthusiasts have nothing to worry about. America has years of backlogged visas in the pipeline. This is all the more reason to slow down; the U.S. has been approving applications far faster than it can issue green cards.

President Trump, and the voters who elected him, recognize that America needs a breather from decades of breakneck immigration that has vastly expanded the welfare state, distorted the job market and strained the environment. The sooner Congress enacts sustainable immigration laws, the better.

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9 Comments

  1. avatar

    I have no issues with having various approved countries’ citizens apply to become immigrants with approved visas. They should all be given tests in their own field of concentrations and ensure that those individuals are provided the proper rules/regulations pertaining to the legality and length of stay in the US. They must be aware
    when their visas expire and when they can renew their visas again. Proper Security clearance background check should be a must to conduct prior to entering the US. This will Make America Great Again!

  2. avatar

    From “THE FATE OF EMPIRES“ by Sir John Glubb:

    –“If we desire to ascertain the laws which govern the rise and fall of empires, the obvious course is to investigate the imperial experiments recorded in history, and to endeavour to deduce from them any lessons which seem to be applicable to them all….”

    –“Summary

    (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.

    (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.

    (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years.

    (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:

    The Age of Pioneers (outburst)

    The Age of Conquests

    The Age of Commerce

    The Age of Affluence

    The Age of Intellect

    The Age of Decadence

    –“The influx of foreigners

    One of the oft-repeated phenomena of great empires is the influx of foreigners to the capital city ….thereby introducing cracks and schisms into the national policies…

    ….many of the foreign immigrants will probably belong to races originally conquered by and absorbed into the empire. While the empire is enjoying its High Noon of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is suddenly revived, and local or provincial movements appear demanding secession or independence.”

    –“Another remarkable and unexpected symptom of national decline is the intensification of internal political hatreds. One would have expected that, when the survival of the nation became precarious, political factions would drop their rivalry and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to save their country….True to the normal course followed by nations in decline, internal differences are not reconciled in an attempt to save the nation. On the contrary, internal rivalries become more acute, as the nation becomes weaker.”

    –“The division of Rome into two periods may be thought unwarranted. The first, or republican, period dates from the time when Rome became the mistress of Italy, and ends with the accession of Augustus. The imperial period extends from the accession of Augustus to the death of Marcus Aurelius. It is true that the empire survived nominally for more than a century after this date, but it did so in constant confusion, rebellions, civil wars and barbarian invasions.”

    –“The Roman Republic….was followed by the empire, which became a super-state, in which all the natives of the Mediterranean basin, regardless of race, possessed equal rights. The name of Rome, originally a city-state, passed from it to an equalitarian international empire. This empire broke in half, the western half being overrun by northern barbarians, the eastern half forming the East Roman or Byzantine Empire.–”

    –“The United States arose suddenly as a new nation, and its period of pioneering was spent in the conquest of a vast continent, not an ancient empire. Yet the subsequent life history of the United States has followed the standard pattern which we shall attempt to trace—the periods of the pioneers, of commerce, of affluence, of intellectualism and of decadence.”

    –“The people of the great nations of the past seem normally to have imagined that their pre-eminence would last for ever. Rome appeared to its citizens to be destined to be for all time the mistress of the world….many people in Britain believed that the empire would endure for ever….That sentiments like these could be publicly expressed without evoking derision shows that, in all ages, the regular rise and fall of great nations has passed unperceived. The simplest statistics prove the steady rotation of one nation after another at regular intervals.”

  3. avatar
    Reynaldo Favila on

    I filled out an application to apply for a green card for my wife. We were set an appointment in Juarez eleven years ago and she was not given the green card because she was already living in the united states. She was given a 10 years punishment or ( castigo ). She is living with me in Texas. Can we now hire a lawyer to file again?

  4. avatar

    Immigrants and their advocates are never satisfied with what they get. They are always entitled to more. One gets a visa to come here and then the next thing you know they are complaining because their aunt has been on a waiting list for 15 years. They get a visa to come here and get a college education and then the fact that they don’t get to stay here and work is proof of a “broken system”. The visa you got was for you, you only, and your family was not promised anything, nor are you entitled to a job here because you went to school here. Try getting into a country like Australia without the benefit of a very specialized degree that they need, or because you’re someone’s uncle. It doesn’t happen.

  5. avatar

    Blame Trump for the Open Border Judge Ordering Invasion Families from Central America be Re-united

    You know Trump is mad that happened. What can he do to stop it? Trump would love to hear from you BTW.

  6. avatar

    People are foolish to think Trump plans on doing something about the Mex invasion!

    The Swamp keeper has already howled about hiring LEGALS at Swamp Palace Mar-a-Lago!

    If he were serious E-VERIFY would be implemented. It never will be in this country as it is too dependent on “cheap” labor illegals the cost of which is passed along to the dying American middle-class.

    • avatar

      The president, Trump or whoever, cannot simply mandate E-verify. Only Congress has the power to make real changes in any aspect of immigration, including E-verify and it should be clear to all by now that reform of immigration will never happen unless we can find a way to almost totally change out Congress to citizens that will limit themselves to doing their job, representing the USA and its citizens. But, since reform of immigration is unlikely to happen, the USA will muddle along going deeper and deeper in debt, doing less and less for American citizens, losing control faster and faster to the overwhelming numbers of foreigners exploiting our nation, until our nation collapses and fails. All of our greatest issues could so easily be fixed if our leaders just cared enough and had the balls to step up, put the health of this nation, its future and its people first and do whatever is necessary to get the USA off the path of destruction. If some way is not found to wrest control of the USA away from the no borders/no nations crowd, our America is doomed and a mere 50 years from now will find few true Americans that even have memories of the America that once was. And to think, such a once great nation was destroyed, not by war, but by the foolishness of its very own leaders and people so willing and eager to give up their own country to strangers.

  7. avatar

    So, under the Trump immigration policy, the foreign influx will still be MASSIVE by historical standards, just not as bad as it was under the worst years of Barry Insane? That’s enough to send the Main Stream Media into hysterics!

    • avatar
      Patricia Watkins on

      The only reasons immigration would still be “massive” is mostly due to an already backlogged system and because the courts and rabid liberals constantly bring lawsuits against Trump to try to stop his immigration policies; In WA State, our Democratic Governor loves to sue Trump because Democratic cities in Washington love open borders and love illegal alien migrants more than they do their own legal citizens. Same goes for the Gov. of CA. And all the hundreds of sanctuary cities across the U.S.