Sens. David Perdue (R., Ga.) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) revealed the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act, or RAISE Act, which aims to boost wages for Americans by slicing immigration levels and recalibrating the system to accommodate those seeking employment in the American workforce.
The legislation seeks to build upon President Donald Trump’s immigration vision and his recent executive order placing a temporary hold on immigration for individuals coming from several countries designated as primary terrorism hotspots.
The bill would cap the number of permanent refugees permitted in the United States to 50,000 per year, which the lawmakers say is in line with average numbers during the past 13 years.
Within its first year of implementation, the immigration plan would reduce the number of individuals granted legal status by 41 percent and then steadily rise to a 50 percent reduction by its tenth year, according to a statistic provided by the senators and based on models established by Princeton and Harvard professors.
Overall immigration would be lowered to 637,960 within the first year of implementation and to 539,958 by year 10, according to these models. This would account for a 50 percent reduction over 2015 levels, which topped out at 1,051,031, according to information provided by the lawmakers.
"We are taking action to fix some of the shortcomings in our legal immigration system," Perdue said in a statement to the Free Beacon. "Returning to our historically normal levels of legal immigration will help improve the quality of American jobs and wages."
The goal of the legislation is to shift the immigration system in the favor of skilled workers. The net benefit of this recalibration would be to the advantage of all American workers with lower-skilled jobs, the lawmakers maintain.
Employment-based visas would become the main priority under the new plan.