ReEnvisioning Immigration
A sensible policy prioritizes spouses and kids, protects the most vulnerable, and empowers the domestic workforce.
ReEnvisioning: Family-Based Migration
Whereas the current system creates endless “chain migration,” of distant relatives, with backlogs, frustration, and a level of immigration that is incompatible with conservation and economic justice, our vision would:
- Limit family green cards to spouses and minor children – including adoptees – of citizens and legal permanent residents.
- Create a renewable non-work temporary visa for immigrants’ parents to stay with their children and grandchildren for long periods of time.
- Support a robust and welcoming visitor system for extended family
ReEnvisioning: Value of U.S. Citizenship
Whereas the current system raffles away green cards and puts tourists who give birth in the U.S. on a path to citizenship, our vision would:
- End the annual ritual of putting 50,000 green cards into a lottery.
- Clarify automatic birthright citizenship to include children born to parents who are either a U.S. citizen or national, lawful permanent resident, or performing active service in the U.S. Armed Forces.
ReEnvisioning: Temporary Guest Worker Programs
Whereas the current system displaces qualified Americans with exploitable foreign workers, our vision would:
- Encourage domestic recruitment channels into underserved communities.
- End programs that offer financial incentives to hire foreign labor over domestic.
- Strictly limit the length of temporary worker programs to better align with true emergency situations.
- Compensate temporary foreign workers at levels commensurate with filling critical gaps in the labor market.
ReEnvisioning: Employment-Based Immigration
Whereas the current system too often brings in workers with skills similar to Americans and/or drains the sending countries of the “change agents” necessary to improve the lives of those left behind, our vision would:
- Prioritize immigrants with exceptional skills that either could not be fully realized in the sending country or that serve an extraordinary national interest.
- Eliminate visas for workers with non-extraordinary skills.
- Encourage domestic recruitment channels into underserved communities.
ReEnvisioning: Humanitarian Immigration
Whereas the current system – riddled with fraud – primarily serves non-urgent refugees, economic migrants, and government-funded resettlement agencies; whereas the current system is riddled with fraud; and whereas just one percent of the 20 million refugees worldwide are resettled, our vision would:
- Prioritize for permanent resettlement internationally recognized special needs refugees with no long-term prospects of returning home or settling in their native regions.
- Redirect funding to areas in and near the home countries where it can save far more people.