Earlier this week, Senators Tom Cotton (R-AK) and David Perdue (R-GA) joined President Trump at the White House to promote their new immigration bill.
The senators claim that the RAISE Act would restore legal immigration levels to their historical norms. This statement is so misleading that it borders on outright deception.
The RAISE Act would reduce the per capita rate of immigration to the lowest amount since just after the Great Depression. Immigration would fall to a rate three times less than the historical average and 11 times less than the historical high.
The purpose of the RAISE Act is to restrict low-skilled immigration in order to raise the wages of American workers. The Cotton-Perdue bill not only will not do that, it also would not create a skills-based immigration system and is not a credible bargaining chip in any future negotiations in Congress.