President Trump, Senators Cotton and Perdue Introduce the RAISE Act

Cozen O'Connor
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On Wednesday, August 2, 2017, President Trump, along with Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) introduced The Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act (RAISE Act). The RAISE Act is proposed to create a skills-based immigration system, seeking to make America more competitive globally, raise wages for American workers, and create jobs to give Americans “a raise.”

“The RAISE Act ends chain migration and replaces our low-skilled system with a new points-based system for receiving a green card,” Trump said on Wednesday. “This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy.”

According to Senator Cotton’s office, the RAISE Act would change the current visa system for employment-based immigration with a “skills-based points system,” where applicants would receive points based on things such as English language proficiency, education, age and job prospects.

The bill would eliminate family-based immigration categories such as adult sons and daughters, as well as brothers and sisters, and redefines “immediate relatives” to exclude parents. According to the government, this alters the current system as immediate relatives currently receive an immigration priority and aren’t made to wait for a visa number, which will no longer be available.

The RAISE Act would also cap refugee admittance to the U.S. at 50,000, while removing the diversity visa lottery that currently allocated 5,000 visas a year to residents of countries that do not send significant numbers of migrants to the U.S.

At this time we do not believe that the RAISE Act has enough support on the Hill or in the business community to become law.

 

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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