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Trumps Starts to Affect Immigration Law
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The Trump team seems to be making a pretty big stamp on our immigration process. This piece (title is something I thought we'd never see from Trump) covers Trump undoing an Obama era EO that encourages quick authorization of VISAs:
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http://thehill.com/...treme-vetting-policy
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The Trump partial win at the SC will see the effectively automatic immigration aproval of extended family members dialed back to immediate family. This seems a step toward the Canadian system that Trump has praised. The article below gives some info on the differences in immigration and outcomes between Canuckistan and the US. Here's a snip (including obligatory snark) from an NYT op-ed.

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But Canada’s hospitable attitude is not innate; it is, rather, the product of very hardheaded government policies. Ever since the mid-1960s, the majority of immigrants to the country (about 65 percent in 2015) have been admitted on purely economic grounds, having been evaluated under a nine-point rubric that ignores their race, religion and ethnicity and instead looks at their age, education, job skills, language ability and other attributes that define their potential contribution to the national work force.
No wonder this approach appeals to President Trump. He’s right to complain that America’s system makes no sense. The majority (about two-thirds in 2015) of immigrants to the United States are admitted under a program known as family reunification — in other words, their fate depends on whether they already have relatives in the country. Family reunification sounds nice on an emotional level (who doesn’t want to unite families?). But it’s a lousy basis for government policy, since it lets dumb luck — that is, whether some relative of yours had the good fortune to get here before you — shape the immigrant population.
The result? Well, contrary to popular myth (and Mr. Trump’s rhetoric), immigrants to the United States also outperform native-born Americans in some ways, including business creation and obedience to the law. But their achievements pale next to those of first-generation Canadians.
For example, about half of all Canadian immigrants arrive with a college degree, while the figure in the United States is just 27 percent. Immigrant children in Canadian schools read at the same level as the native born, while the gap is huge in the United States. Canadian immigrants are almost 20 percent more likely to own their own homes and 7 percent less likely to live in poverty than their American equivalents.
Mr. Trump has spoken about adopting a merit-based system before, and done nothing. And his speech in Iowa was short on specifics (he had more details on his idea for putting solar panels atop his border wall). But if he’s truly serious about reform, the president could do a lot worse than look north for answers. He wouldn’t even have to admit where he got them from. Canadians are a modest, unassuming lot, used to being overlooked and overshadowed. They won’t mind keeping his secret."
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https://www.nytimes.com/...ump.html?ref=opinion
Last edited by: dave_w: Jun 29, 17 8:08
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Re: Trumps Starts to Affect Immigration Law [dave_w] [ In reply to ]
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One major difference is that We don't have as much of a need up here for unskilled immigrant labour as you do. And we do have a program for that. Plenty of Mexican and Jamaican labourers in our fruit picking areas, but they are here on a guest worker program. That program has a lot of problems in it but at least it allows some flexibility in hiring for low skilled positions in areas of worker shortage. Most recent numbers I found looks like 360,000 in 2014.

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Re: Trumps Starts to Affect Immigration Law [CaptainCanada] [ In reply to ]
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CaptainCanada wrote:
One major difference is that We don't have as much of a need up here for unskilled immigrant labour as you do. And we do have a program for that. Plenty of Mexican and Jamaican labourers in our fruit picking areas, but they are here on a guest worker program. That program has a lot of problems in it but at least it allows some flexibility in hiring for low skilled positions in areas of worker shortage. Most recent numbers I found looks like 360,000 in 2014.
I don't think we have much of a need either--or at least, we wouldn't have much of a need if the availability dried up.

The difference between Canadian immigration and that of the US is proximity to Mexico and SA...the 10MM here illegally and those who went through legal channels are largely low-skilled, low education migrant labor, so the market has adjusted to the availability of that labor. If suddenly the cheap farm hands disappeared what would happen to our farm industry? It would take time but wouldn't we see more automation and machines, fewer laborers who work for more wages, net-net it might result in a small bump in grocery prices but it'd also mean millions fewer low income/poverty-level citizens and non-citizens to worry about.

That blue collar immigrant labor has also impacted landscaping, construction, plumbing, janitorial services, etc etc. These are real jobs that over the decades have gone more and more to immigrants. That's fine, the vast majority of those folks are here legally, they work their asses off, are responsible workers and green card holders or citizens. BUT, they're low skilled labor, when we increasingly need less and less low skilled labor. Canada gets college educated immigrants who are starting businesses and contributing to IT and engineering firms; we're getting low-skilled workers who know little english and are only employable in blue collar fields that are already saturated. It's not racist to say that's poor policy, as a country we should be looking at attracting the best immigrants who can provide jobs and fill the industries that are under capacity. This, to me, is the biggest sticking point with the blue collar folks who stupidly voted for Trump: we've allowed legal and illegal immigrants into this country and they've increasingly flitered into blue collar markets that were fairly saturated already, driving down pay and and driving out the existing labor; why the fuck did we allow that to happen for 30, 40+ years, the writing's been on the wall for decades and still people wonder why blue collar folks are mad about this shit?
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