THE IMMIGRATION COMPROMISE. The value of the new bill hinges on whether you think an effective amnesty for the country's 12 million undocumented immigrants is worth a 400,000 to 600,000 person guest worker program. That's the trade-off: A guest-worker program progressives should find abhorrent set against a broader path-to-citizenship that's actually pretty good. My sense is that the system we've got right now is so bad, that even a regulated guest worker program is better than the de facto, fully unregulated guest worker program we're living with. And bringing the 12 million undocumented immigrants who currently live in this country into the light would be a huge boon. So my snap reaction is that this might be a deal worth making. The onus is now on Reid to better it through the legislative process. Additionally, the legislation opens the way for far more high-skills immigration and converts the current family-based system -- in which relatives of immigrants have priority, which is how you get so many extended families -- to a merit-based system, wherein only immediate family members have preference, and you gain "points" for other metrics, such language ability, skills, education, sector, etc. The bill inexplicably lacks a significant increase in high-skills visas, but the movement towards a more rational prioritizing system makes a lot of sense. For instance: Under the proposed system, nurses, whom we need, would start with eight points, and workers in occupations the Bureau of Labor judges as likely to experience the most growth in the next decade get 15 points. That makes, at least, a kind of sense, which is rather more than you can say for the current set-up. But I'm open to being convinced on all this. What do the other Tappers think? --Ezra Klein
THE IMMIGRATION COMPROMISE....
A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.
Quality journalism is expensive to produce, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund what we do. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make our work possible. Any amount you give today will help us continue reporting on what matters to our democracy.
You can help power this newsroom by making a one-time donation or by becoming a member today.
