US President Trump has unveiled a new plan to curb legal migration by up to 50 percent and favour those migrants who speak English.
The cut will happen over the next ten years and will be carried out through reducing the number of relatives migrants can bring with them into the country. The proposed bill will be on a similar point based system to that seen in countries Canada and Australia.
“This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy,” said Trump.
“The reforms … will help ensure that newcomers to our wonderful country will be assimilated, will succeed and will achieve the American dream,” he continued.
The President told Congress in a speech that the new system would protect American workers by reducing unskilled migration
The new bill will, according to Trump, “represent the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century.”
The bill was initially unveiled in February by Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia to “help raise American workers’ wages by restoring legal immigration levels to their historical norms and rebalancing the system toward employment-based visas and immediate-family household members.”
“We are taking action to fix some of the shortcomings in our legal immigration system,” they said in February. “Returning to our historically normal levels of legal immigration will help improve the quality of American jobs and wages.”
Regarding Trump’s infamous wall on the US/Mexican border, the US President has yet made another reference in front of the Mexican President that the southern neighbour will pay for it.
Asked by reporters at the G20 meeting last month if he expected Mexico to pay for a border wall, Trump responded: “Absolutely.” President Peña Nieto said nothing.