Attorney General Jeff Sessions argued Friday that after decades of broken immigration policies, it’s time to fix a U.S. system that currently doesn’t judge the merit of the people it allows in.
“The American people have known for more than 30 years that our immigration system is broken. It’s intentionally designed to be blind to merit. That’s a feature, not a bug,” Sessions said in a Friday afternoon speech. “It doesn’t favor education or skills. It just favors anybody who has a relative in America — and not necessarily a close relative.”
Sessions announced the Trump administration’s decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last fall, and his former communications advisor Stephen Miller is now a top policy adviser at the White House and reportedly pitched the administration’s newest immigration plan on Thursday in a call with various Republicans. That plan called for a reduction in legal immigration and other border-tightening measures, in return for giving 1.8 million Dreamers already in the U.S. a path to citizenship.
On Friday, Sessions criticized chain migration, which allows U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to petition the government to allow their close relatives to enter the country, as well as the diversity visa lottery, which supplies green cards to applicants from underrepresented countries.
“Employers don’t roll dice when deciding who they want to hire. Our incredible military doesn’t draw straws when deciding whom to accept. But for some reason, when we’re picking new Americans — the future of this country — our government uses a randomized lottery system and chain migration,” Sessions said. He said the current immigration system is one “[t]hat defies common sense.”
Sessions said a merit-based immigration system means “welcoming the best and brightest” while also “banning and deporting gang members, identity fraudsters, drunk divers, and child abusers.”
He noted that countries like Canada and Australia use merit-based immigration systems, and said a similar system would “better serve our national interest because it would benefit the American people.”
“That kind of system would be great for our economy, of course. Much more importantly, it would be the best way to ensure that our immigration system does not continue to harm our national security. Immigration is a national security issue,” he said.
The White House on Thursday released a one-page summary of its proposal to protect Dreamers and shore up border security.
