Herainestold wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2019 12:05 am
The primary goal is to reduce the number of immigrants both legal and illegal. The secondary goal is increase the proportion of "desirable" immigrants at the expense of "undesirable" immigrants.
IMHO the primary goal by far is to reduce the number of undesirable immigrants. Why would anybody want to reduce the number of desirable immigrants? The question is what constitutes undesirable.
For the current Administration, all illegal immigrants are inherently undesirable, hence the wall. Muslims are undesirable, because of fear and prejudice, hence the Muslim ban. Asylum seekers crossing the southern border are undesirable, because they are presumed to be ordinary illegal immigrants in disguise, using asylum as an excuse. Refugees are undesirable, because some of them are Muslim as above, and some of them are from Latin America, assumed as above to be ordinary migrants using a claim of refugee status as an excuse. Maybe some refugees from other places are also undesirable simply because this Administration is compassion impaired.
The Administration has proposed shifting the framework of the legal immigration system to give more emphasis to high skill workers and less to family members of current citizens and permanent residents. This is usually explained as making the US system more like Canada's or Australia's. If this happened, I imagine it would very likely result in a higher proportion of European immigrants. But it would require a change in the law, not just an administrative action, and as I understand it, neither party in Congress has any interest in the idea.