Last night, Laura Ingraham interviewed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Fox News. When asked if he would support Senators Cotton and Perdue’s RAISE Act in DACA negotiations, Senator McConnell said “I agree with Cotton and Perdue. The president has given us until March to deal with the issue of DACA and the question is whether you’re just going to do that and nothing else. I’m in favor of doing something on the DACA front…. But I don’t think we ought to just do that… There are plenty of changes to the legal immigration system that should be added to any kind of a DACA fix.”
The Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy or RAISE Act, which was introduced by Cotton and Perdue in August, holds the key to fixing many of the problems with the United States’ legal immigration system. If passed, the bill would end chain migration, eliminate the diversity visa lottery, set an annual cap of 50,000 refugee admissions and establish a merit-based points system for new green card issuances.
Under current law, the United States admits over 1 million legal immigrants per year with only a small fraction based on skills. Through chain migration, those new immigrants are then allowed to sponsor even more immigrants for legal permanent residence. The RAISE act would cut legal immigration to less than 650,000 admissions in just the first year.
Senator David Perdue commented that Mitch McConnell’s support for ending the diversity visa lottery is a milestone. “When you have the majority leader of the Republican caucus say that he is in favor of ending chain migration, I think that’s a milestone,” said Perdue. “I think the mood in our caucus anyway is that ending chain migration is a top priority.”
Learn more about the RAISE Act here.
