Juliana Gruenwald, in a National Journal piece, reports that Senators Mark Warner (D, VA), Chris Coons (D, DE), Jerry Moran (R, KS) and Marco Rubio (R, FL) are proposing an immigration bill—Start-up Act 2.0—that would create two new visas.
One visa would make it easier for foreign students who’ve gained American schools’ post-graduate STEM degrees to remain in the US after graduation. These folks also would be eligible for permanent residency if they then remained employed in a STEM field for the next five years (and presumably eligible for citizenship, but this visa is separate from that).
The other visa would be for the roughly 75,000 skilled legal immigrants per year who start a business in the US, employ Americans, and invest or raise capital in the US. This entrepreneur visa would provide another pathway to permanent residence and eventually to citizenship.
This is a step in the right direction; however, it isn’t enough by itself, and it’s muddled by inclusions that, while important in their own right, have nothing to do with immigration.
It isn’t enough because it only addresses one narrow aspect of one part of a three-part immigration problem. I wrote earlier about those three parts; some of that is quoted here for convenience:
Most modern Conservatives agree that our borders need to be secured, including against illegal immigration. This need is based on…the right of any nation—the right of any society in their social compact—to determine for themselves who they will allow into their nation: no foreign entity has an inherent right to enter another nation without that nation’s permission….
There are two additional aspects to immigration, and if these are not also solved, the immigration matter will continue to be a serious risk to our national security. These two aspects are what to do about the population of illegal aliens currently present in the United States, and what to do about legal entry for immigrants into our country.
[W]e need to remove the impediments to legal immigration, we need to eliminate the quotas that put an upper bound on the number of talented who want to work here, on the number of foreign-born who are educated in our Universities and want to stay past their college days. … It simply shouldn’t be that hard to enter the United States legally. There should be border crossing stations every mile along our border….
These visas are, as I said, a step in the right direction, but the idea falls short on two fronts: it adds to the breadth and complexity of the visa bureaucracy without addressing the overall problem of legal entry for all immigrants, and it doesn’t address at all the other two aspects of our immigration problem.
The muddle consists of tax and regulation clauses that the Senators consider politically necessary to get the bill passed—or at least publicly debated in Senator Harry Reid’s (D, NV) Senate. Among these extraneous items are:
- a tax credit intended to encourage start-ups to engage in R&D,
- a tax exemption that would eliminate capital gains taxes on investments in start-ups held for at least five years, and
- a requirement that any new regulation with an impact of $100 million or more be subject to a cost-benefit analysis prior to approval.
These are important in their own right, and the need to include these things, which are irrelevant to an immigration bill, in an immigration bill is a testament to the partisan, obstructionist nature of the Democrats’ hold on the Senate.
The tax questions are better handled in a tax reform bill that moves to a flat tax and maintains that flatness by eliminating subsidies of all types. The isolated regulation item is better handled in a separate regulatory reform bill that eliminates most of the existing regulations (much of which are mutually conflicting, much more of which are obsolete) and that returns regulation generation to the Congress as the most direct means of forcing that body actively to satisfy in its regulatory oversight responsibility.
The Senators’ immigration bill is well worth supporting, but only if it’s made clear that this is only an opening salvo in the struggle seriously to reform our immigration process.
The immigration problem, as I wrote, is a three-pronged problem. What’s your plan for actually securing our borders? What’s your plan for dealing with the illegal aliens who are currently present?
Employment visas only for STEMs? Who will pick your crops, then? Chavez’ union in California tried a hire Americans for all the crop-picking work available a year or two ago. Nobody showed up.
E-Verify is a good idea, but so is making it easy for those who want to immigrate–or just live on a green card–to enter the US legally. Those crop pickers, for instance–those poor people you disparage so much–are poor, but they’re not burdens on our society.
And so on.
Eric Hines
Simplify illegal alien enforcement problem, by enacting it as a FELONY to enter this sovereign nation. This should have been run through our whimpering Congress long ago; instead they allowed pressure groups to influence them. This will not happen under a Tea Party Congress, that will stifle any new laws so illegal aliens can gain any kind of amnesty. Our laws are a travesty and are soft on punishment. Put businesses that don’t use E-Verify in mandatory jail, along by seizing assets and harsh fines. Award Whistle blowers who detect illegal aliens working in companies to ICE. Amend the Birthright Citizenship law so no children smuggled into the U.S. are only eligible for citizenship, if one parent is born in America or a naturalized citizen. This will discourage illegal migrants and immigrants arriving here as they have for decades, through neglect at our borders and other entry ports.
WE CANNOT AFFORD TO ALLOW MORE POVERTY ENTER THE UNITED STATES?
Employment visas should only be granted to professional people and STEM workers (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) workers to the U.S. in an expedited process. The Constitutional TEA PARTY is gaining in power and will unseat liberal Democrat-Republican pro-illegal immigration politicians, derailing open border zealot ideologies. Lastly we must oversee all elections, as Democrats are indifferent to illegal aliens voting, which is carefully hidden; surf the Internet for information on voter fraud and ID theft that has been gaining momentum in the last two decades. Read the latest regularizes by zeroing in on Florida.
Alabama, as Arizona and the 48 states are up against the wall of harsh forced unfunded mandates by U.S. courts. Every state is confronted by billions of dollars to pay for illegal immigration in public welfare. The cost to Alabama for Costs for Illegal Aliens as studied by The Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIRUS) it was $2.7 billion dollars owing to the growing illegal alien population. But of course nobody knows the true amount as figures for population and the costs to support these people are kept subdued. During the arguments between David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz about illegal immigration, a report overshadows the latest Census data indicates Texas’s illegal immigrant population is costing the state’s taxpayers more than $4.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. Even if the estimated tax contributions of illegal immigrant workers are subtracted, net outlays still amount to more than $3.7 billion per year.
The annual fiscal burden amounts to about $725 per Texas household headed by a native-born resident. But the majority of Americans are well aware that according to studies of FAIRUS and other pro-sovereignty organizations, that annually the expenditure is well over $113 billion dollars. In addition organizations have completed their own studies, that if another Amnesty was enacted we would raise our U.S. treasury deficit from 16 Trillion dollars, by another 2.6 trillion dollars. Many groups and media aspire to offer information about the movement and costs of illegal immigration into this country, but much is not factored in to taxpayer’s outlay and intelligence which can be found at the websites of American Patrol and NumbersUSA.
Sen. Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney had better stick to their principles, and they promised the taxpayer that passages of new negative immigration laws will not be tolerated, but only those in the best interests of the people. Americans are frustrated with the draining of their money to subsidize any person who crosses the border, including the escalation of births to illegal aliens and then claiming citizenship when the annual figure is 400.000. Any thoughts of gaining passage of Amnesty by either party will condemn the majority of states to even more need for health care treatments, hospital inpatients for dialysis and serious surgeries all for free. These are more costs dumped eventually on taxpayers of uncompensated care from the central government. Awarding education for hundreds of thousands of illegal children, who can claim citizenship under a very shaky law, which is destined to reach the Congress thanks to Rep. Steve King? In less than 15 years are schools are overrun by illegal children who cannot speak English, necessitating more time spent by teachers and therefore affecting the failing grades across the country in education.
Of all the politicians that must be thrown out of office, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada must go. Not only has he derailed a amendment to stop illegal aliens living in this country, receiving mostly fraudulent IRS child tax reimbursement, to the tune 0f 4.2 billion dollars, he has done nothing to halt the influx of foreign nationals occupying Nevada. The tired old lawmaker has guaranteed that those working in this country illegally will be sustain in receiving billions of dollars in tax reimbursement for children that are not even present in this country. He is responsible for stopping ICE from raiding the building construction sites, but clandestine inviting mass illegal aliens into the state. The TEA PARTY must adjoin to seat a new younger Senator leader in his place, as he is just one of the liberal-Democrats, involved in wrecking this country’s economic return.
By passing another Comprehensive Immigration Reform would devastate our economy. ICE prohibited programs as the Democrats Dream Act, the Sanctuary policies has its costs, to all taxpayers and further encouraging the exploitation of the American low income worker. Less enforcement also has a negative impact, as Obama administration stands down from proceeding with large scale ICE raids or the deportation of all individuals. Years of complete indifference by both political parties to securing the borders, interior ‘seek and detain’ has allowed large influxes of criminal illegal aliens, with many reentering time and time again. The fact that illegal alien expectant females are procuring even more billions of dollars in education and schooling for their children, if once stepping on to U.S. soil, or disguising their pregnancy when alighting from aircraft, with a design to take advantage of the ‘Birthright Citizenship’ law badly manipulated from its original intent.
There are obstacles in Congress by both sides of the aisle, but even so 59 bipartisan sponsors to amend this law. Similar is to mandate the very controversial E-verify bill, that instead of voluntary for businesses, so it becomes the rule of the land. That every business, no matter how large and small must authenticate their workers, showing they are eligible to work in the United States. This is a very strength of every voter, to stop the continuation of these wrongly enacted laws, to amend Birthright Citizenship, so one parent must be a U.S. citizen, by birth or naturalization. All voters must fight back and demand from your Senator or House Representative that E-verify must be implemented permanently and Birthright citizenship be amended.
Neither new law costs money, but will save absolutely billions in YOUR taxes. The controversial publicity around ‘Chipotle’ is typical of businesses that think they are above the law, when hiring workers. Cheap labor is for profiteers, who have no conscious hiring foreigners, when there are thousands of legal Hispanics who would in this recession; jump at a chance of a job? As an addition ‘Secure Communities’ is now a mandatory law, so all suspects taken into custody will have their fingerprints sent to Homeland Security and ICE. But we must push the idiots in Washington, to pass mandated E-Verify and the amendment to the Birthright Citizenship Act.
E-Verify as nationwide push of enforcement have a 98 % successful program, that detects foreign labor and unable to verify, they will start to expedite departure to their home countries. All these policies, rules and regulations is the agenda of the monumental growth of the Constitutional TEA PARTY splinter group of the Republican Party. Both entrenched parties are nervous of this rise of a national party, which they cannot control.