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David Perdue: A RAISE up: Merit-based immigration

David Perdue
Family members welcome their relatives as new U.S. citizens after taking the citizenship oath during naturalization ceremonies at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ceremony in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Today, many mainstream Hollywood movies are made in Georgia, but multiple cities in Canada are among the top four largest film production centers in North America. Why? The answer is partly because Canada's merit-based immigration system has allowed Vancouver to attract many high-tech young professionals from around the world.

President Trump wants to fix our broken immigration system. Tom Cotton and I agree. We have a plan to fix it called the RAISE Act. It's pro-worker, pro-growth, and proven to work. It will create jobs, protect American workers, give immigrants a decent shot at rising up the economic ladder, and make America more competitive with the rest of the world.

The RAISE Act creates a merit-based points system for immigration, similar to ones in Canada and Australia that have worked for decades. Those systems include categories like education, age, salary, accomplishment, investment, and English proficiency.

This plan welcomes these talented, skilled individuals from around the world who want to contribute to our economy. It removes current per-country caps on immigration so high-skilled applicants aren't shut out of the process simply because of where they're from. It also retains green card preferences for spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, but not for most extended family members.

Finally, the RAISE Act eliminates an outdated visa lottery system that is plagued by fraud and caps the number of refugees offered permanent residency at 50,000 per year, which is in line with our recent 13-year average.

The RAISE Act is proven to work. It's modeled after the immigration systems of Canada and Australia, both of which have successfully attracted highly skilled workers to their countries for decades. To be completely clear, the RAISE Act only deals with the green card system. It does not touch temporary work visas regularly used in the agriculture, tourism, and hospitality industries.

Today, we are competing in a 21st century economy. We need an immigration system that meets the needs of our economy and makes us competitive. The current system is not achieving these goals. Let's pass the RAISE Act and bring our immigration system into the 21st century.

David Perdue is a Republican, U.S. senator from Georgia.