Under the RAISE Act, There Would Be No RAISE Act

Sorry for the perplexing/recursive title on this post, but as you will see, it is designed to show how silly some of the rhetoric on immigration policy (on “many sides”) has become.

Let’s start with an article in the Washington Post titled “Under Trump’s New Immigration Rule, His Own Grandfather Likely Wouldn’t Have Gotten In.” Grandpa Trump (actually Trumpf) simply wouldn’t have had enough work skills, facility in English and so on to qualify for immigration under the point system proposed in the RAISE Act, endorsed by the Trump administration.

Very true, and let’s note an even more existential point: Donald Trump would not exist (nor would his father etc.). Same for Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House adviser who apparently was involved in drafting RAISE. No, Miller wouldn’t exist.

For that matter, Norm Matloff wouldn’t exist. My dad immigrated to the U.S. with his parents from Lithuania and my mom’s parents came from Austria. I don’t know the details, but it’s a safe bet that they wouldn’t have qualified under RAISE either. So, no Norm Matloff would exist to write the post you are now reading.

Using a similar argument, it’s likely that the ancestors of Senators Cotton and Perdue, authors of RAISE, wouldn’t have garnered many points under RAISE; facility in English, maybe, but no special skills, no STEM degree, and my goodness, no Nobel Prize.  So, Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue would not exist either.

Uh, wait a minute…so there would be no RAISE Act either. Yep, under the RAISE Act, there would be no RAISE Act. And even if there were such an Act, there would be no President Trump to endorse it, nor would there be a Stephen Miller to introduce it, nor would there be a Norm Matloff to make fun of the whole process.

This Alice in Wonderland-ish game is fun, but it also shows how silly the arguments on immigration can become, especially sanctimonious ones like that in the Post article.

But there’s more. There’s something the Post isn’t telling you here, a key point:

Under PRESENT immigration policy, none of those people cited by the Post would likely have qualified to come to the U.S. either. Friedrich Trumpf didn’t have sponsoring American siblings, sponsoring American children, a sponsoring American spouse, a sponsoring American employer, refugee status or a claim to political asylum. His only chance would be the Diversity Lottery, a long shot to say the least. Luckily for him (and for the Post, which would have nothing to write about without our newsworthy president), immigration policy was quite lax at that time. But TODAY, forget it, Friedrich! Current policy just would not accept you.

In other words, the Post is setting up a straw man, trashing RAISE for what actually is the same “deficiency” in our current policy.

Mind you, I still don’t like RAISE, for a reason not entirely different from the point being made by the Post. I don’t like point system-based immigration policies, because I prefer a mix, socioeconomically and otherwise, in our immigrants. But I don’t like people trying to fool me with mind games either, which is what the Amazon Post is doing here.

 

 

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