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by sunshowers 903 days ago
The utility of a point system is that it makes the criteria legible—the problem wasn't the fact that it was a points system, the problem was in the details of the system.

The second link you posted lists a large number of anti-immigrant ideas that Trump had. That was the general tenor of his administration as I personally experienced it: rhetoric about unauthorized immigration, actions against legal immigrants.

(I used to be on an H1B and got my green card last year.)
1 comments
abduhl 902 days ago
This is a strange comment to read since, as far as I recall, the only details that were ever really shared before the overall plan was killed due to its political backlash are that it would be merits-based considering age, ability to speak English, job offers, and educational background and that it would shift the number of green cards away from being primarily awarded based on family ties to this new merit system. Democrats rejected even discussing the proposal out of hand. Some quotes from https://apple.news/ABYsQ0lE-RFWj_S5pwuFq5w :

On the other side of the aisle, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called Trump’s offering a “dead-on-arrival plan that is not a remotely serious proposal.” And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) slammed it as a “despicable abdication of moral authority” that would have kept Blumenthal’s own immigrant father from entering the United States.

…

Democrats on Thursday also took issue with the White House’s characterization of the kind of immigrants who bring “merit” to the United States.

“It is really a condescending word,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference on Thursday morning. “Are they saying family is without merit?”

link
sunshowers 902 days ago
Ah, I was going by the RAISE Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act#Full_details_of_the_...

The goal of the RAISE Act was to substantially reduce family-based immigration while not increasing employment-based immigration to compensate for that.

I didn't realize Trump had his own plan (that was never going to be law anyway). But based on what I actually personally experienced Trump actually do, my Bayesian prior for it being helpful to immigrants is extraordinarily low.

link