Edwin Rivera puts away damaged belongings in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/For The Washington Post)

The sad suspicion about Trump’s shameful treatment of Puerto Rico.



DANA MILBANK, WASHINGTON POST

Suppose that the entire San Diego metropolitan area had lost electrical power, and it wouldn’t be restored for months.

Or, suppose that most of the ports, roads and cellular towers in the Seattle metropolitan area had been destroyed, and a major dam had failed.

Or, that most of the homes in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota were either damaged or destroyed in one day.

Or, that the combined populations of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont had seen much of their forests and agricultural land wiped out.

Families try to cross the San Lorenzo River in Morovis, Puerto Rico. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post)

Or, that the residents of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming — combined — had lost access to food and clean water, leaving them vulnerable to cholera. And imagine that overflowing hospitals, without power, had no capacity to deal with an outbreak.

Now, imagine that in response to any of these scenarios, the president of the United States variously ignored the plight of the affected Americans (in all of the above cases about 3.4 million people, give or take), blamed them for their own troubles and provided inadequate help. This is precisely what is happening right now to the 3.4 million U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico, an island territory more populous than about 20 states. Hurricane Maria essentially wiped out these Americans’ ports, roads, electricity, communications, water supply and crops and many homes. Yet, a week after the storm, the response from the American mainland has been paltry.

People sit in an apartment damaged by Hurricane Maria. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

There is no rush, as there was after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, to approve the emergency funds that Puerto Rico will surely need. There has been no massive movement of military personnel and equipment to Puerto Rico: no aircraft carrier (one was sent to the Florida Keys in response to Hurricane Irma), no hospital ship (finally on Tuesday afternoon the Navy said it was sending one). The Post’s Joel Achenbach, Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton called the three Navy amphibious ships dispatched to Puerto Rico “a modest fleet given the scale of the crisis.”

President Trump, so visible when Harvey and Irma hit, all but ignored the devastation that Maria brought to Puerto Rico, devoting more attention to respect for the flag at NFL games. When he did turn his focus to Puerto Rico on Monday, it was to say that the island “was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt” and that its “old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars . . . owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with.”

A flooded street in San Juan, five days after Hurricane Maria arrived in Puerto Rico. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Two Trump Cabinet members, Energy Secretary Rick Perry (who traveled with Trump to Texas and Florida after hurricanes there) and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, made a joint public appearance Monday but didn’t even mention Puerto Rico. And the Trump administration said it would not assist Puerto Rico by waiving the Jones Act, which restricts the use of foreign cargo ships, after waiving the act in response to Harvey and Irma.

Finally, Trump began to say the right things on Tuesday, acknowledging Puerto Rico “needs a lot of money.” He said he’ll visit next Tuesday. [He waived the Jones Act.] Trump explained that there’s “a very big ocean” around Puerto Rico but said “we’re doing a really good job” and predicted his administration will get an “A-plus” for its response.

That’s out of the question, but Trump could avoid a failing grade if he hurries...As Achenbach, et al. report, Adm. Paul Zukunft, the Coast Guard commandant, said Monday that he understands why Puerto Rico’s residents feel forgotten. “They feel isolated, and they’re probably getting a sense of betrayal, of, well, ‘Where is the cavalry?’ ” Zukunft said.

Maria Antonia Perez Rivera looks on from her battered residence in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Carlos Giusti/Associated Press)

Good question. Phillip Carter, a military specialist with the Center for a New American Security, wrote a piece for Slate likening Trump’s “anemic” response in Puerto Rico to President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Carter told me Puerto Rico conservatively needs a response of 50,000 U.S. troops. Even Haiti — a foreign country — got the help of more than 20,000 troops after its 2010 earthquake.

“The response to Harvey and Irma and previous disasters has been much more substantial,” Carter said. Trump, he said, “is more interested in the NFL than Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

No question the logistics are harder in Puerto Rico. But the 3.4 million U.S. citizens there have long endured second-class status: no voting members of Congress, no presidential vote, unequal benefits and high poverty. 

  [Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic: Although 97 percent of voters in a Puerto Rico referendum on June 11, 2017 voted to start down the path of statehood, the chance of the island becoming a state is still, at best, a long shot.... The final hurdle to Puerto Rico statehood is the fact that Congress simply doesn’t have to take up the matter at all, even with a referendum in hand. In today’s political climate, the Republican-dominated body won’t feel any pressure to add an island of millions of likely Democrats to the electorate....Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez, an Illinois Democrat whose parents migrated to Chicago from Puerto Rico, outlined this dilemma in the language of realpolitik in a statement before the plebiscite.  “The supporters of statehood are selling a fantasy that a Latino, Caribbean nation will be admitted as a state during the era of Donald Trump,” wrote Gutiérrez. “[Also] that states, many of which supported Trump, will accept a Spanish-speaking state that will receive just as many Senators and maybe even more House seats than they currently have.”]

Now, the Trump administration’s failure to help Americans in Puerto Rico with the same urgency it gave those in Texas and Florida furthers a sad suspicion that the disparate treatment has less to do with logistics than language and skin color.

Who is Kim Jong Un?

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, with what the C.I.A. calls “the disco ball.” The sphere is supposedly a nuclear weapon, shrunken to fit inside the nose cone of a missile.CreditKorean Central News Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency

Who is Kim Jong Un? -- “In China, the man threatening to fire missiles at the United States is often derided as a chubby brat,” the New York Times’s Choe Sang-Hun reports. “In the United States, a senator recently referred to him as ‘this crazy fat kid.’ But the target of all that scorn, Kim Jong-un … has long been underestimated. His ultimate motives, like many details of his life, are uncertain. Only a few people outside North Korea have been allowed to meet him, among them [Dennis Rodman and] a Japanese sushi chef … What little is known of Mr. Kim’s record suggests ruthlessness — and some ideological flexibility ... ‘Smart, pragmatic, decisive,’ Andrei Lankov, a North Korea [in Seoul], said of Mr. Kim. ‘But also capricious, moody and ready to kill easily.’”

He is prepared to push back against the United States and its allies to a point, many believe, but never enough to risk a war that would threaten his rule as the third-generation strongman in a family dynasty that took hold after World War II." 

-- Meanwhile, the escalating crisis with North Korea has also underscored Trump’s failure to fill key posts in the region. 

CNN’s Ryan Struyk reports: “A major Defense Department slot -- the Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs... Meanwhile, a key State Department position called the Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs is also without a nomination. The heads of the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation also remain un-nominated under Trump. And the Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs, essential to bridging the gap between the State and Defense Departments, has not been nominated under Trump despite being confirmed under both Bush and Obama by June. … And the crucial ambassadorship to South Korea also remains vacant[.] … It's currently filled by Marc Knapper, the previous No. 2 of the embassy.”

-- The New York Times’ Rick Gladstone presents one important question – if the U.S. attacks North Korea first, would it be considered self-defense?“Michael N. Schmitt, a professor at the United States Naval War College and an affiliate at the Harvard Law School … said three basic requirements must be met: The other country must have the ability to attack; the other country’s behavior must show that an attack is imminent; and there are no other ways to forestall it. While North Korea may have an ability to attack the United States, there is widespread skepticism that an attack is imminent. And many officials, including some of Mr. Trump’s senior aides, have said other options have not been exhausted. ‘I think that the answer to the question is fairly unequivocally ‘no,’’ said Kevin Jon Heller, a law professor at the University of London. ‘There’s no right of self-defense against a non-imminent threat.’”

-- “[Another] major consideration would be whether and when to evacuate American and other allied civilians, which is no small feat as Seoul [is a] city of about 10 million,” New York Times’s Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt report. “‘With all this talk, what I worry about is a serious miscalculation,’ said James D. Thurman, [the former top U.S.] commander in South Korea ...  He estimated that at least a quarter-million Americans would have to be moved. If the United States was prepared to go beyond a limited strike, it could conduct a surprise attack on North Korea’s missile garrison and weapon storage areas … American officials, however, do not have high confidence that the military could find and destroy North Korea’s entire arsenal of long-range missiles and nuclear warheads … “

“‘I can’t underscore enough how unappealing all the military options are,' said Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon’s top policy official at the end of the Obama administration. ‘This wouldn’t end well.

The War Over Obamacare May Never End Even if the GOP gives up on repeal and replace.

538

The latest version of Obamacare repeal is officially dead, with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declaring he would not move ahead with a vote on the the Graham-Cassidy legislation. Arizona's John McCain, Maine’s Susan Collins [above], and Kentucky’s Rand Paul announced they are against voting for the bill, which would put the Republicans three votes shy of passage. 

But I don’t think the Obamacare wars are over — or even close to over. We tend to think there are only two possible futures for the Affordable Care Act: It remains in place or Republicans in Congress repeal it. But there are really four paths:

1. Repeal and replace succeeds. Republicans in Congress find a way to repeal or partially repeal Obamacare. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah [above] has already floated the idea of adopting a reconciliation bill for 2018 that includes tax reform and an Obamacare repeal. This would allow Republicans to attempt to accomplish both major GOP goals using a single bill that would require only 50 votes to pass. It would be hard to pull off, but the fac that Hatch is floating the idea suggests that Republicans may not give up trying to pass an Obamacare repeal with 50 votes, even if they can’t use the 2017 reconciliation process, which expires after Sept 30.
2. Executive branch undermines Obamacare. President Trump’s administration could do a number of things — such as cutting the advertising budget for the Obamacare marketplaces (which has already happened) or refusing to pay insurers for cost-sharing subsidies (which Trump has not yet done) — that don’t outright repeal the law, but that severely weaken its effect and over four years might add up to a partial repeal.

Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander, Tennessee, accompanied by ranking member Senator Patty Murray of Washington AP

1. Bipartisanship. A bipartisan congressional effort to fix the law — along the lines of the bill Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington were working on until GOP leaders decided this week to focus on Graham-Cassidy — could still gain traction.
2. Trump implements Obamacare. In this scenario, the Trump administration and Republican governors decide to give up on repeal and instead implement Obamacare. This would mean Trump’s team would need to encourage insurers to remain in the program and some of the 19 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, nearly all of which are led by Republicans, would likely opt to do so.

Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration, in trying to pass an Obamacare repeal for much of the year, have essentially been vacillating between these four approaches. The White House has taken steps, like paying out the cost-sharing subsidies owed to insurers under the law, that move in the direction of approach No 4. But cutting the Obamacare ad funding is more like No. 2, a kind of Obamacare sabotage. And the Trump administration didn’t formally oppose Alexander’s bipartisan approach until this week, when it seemed like Graham-Cassidy could pass.

It’s hard to say which path Republicans will take, even next week. And this is not because party leaders are stupid or confused about their goals, but because each of these paths is fraught for Republicans.

Repeal and replace succeeds: It’s not an accident that Republicans keep coming up a handful of votes short. The party’s ideology keeps pushing it toward approaches that would cut Medicaid and leave millions more people uninsured. But those ideas are unpopular with the public, and the Obamacare provision that ensures people with pre-existing conditions can get affordable coverage has become a kind of political red line that can’t be crossed.

So Republicans keep trying to advance bills that cut Obamacare’s regulations, rules and costs without leaving more people uninsured or pricing out people with pre-existing conditions. These goals ...also fall apart under scrutiny from policy analysts like the Congressional Budget Office.

Obviously, this option goes away if Democrats win control of the House or Senate in 2018 or if Republicans no longer occupy the Oval Office.

Executive branch undermines Obamacare: Millions of Americans are already buying insurance through Obamacare exchanges or living in states that have expanded Medicaid. Cutting off the advertising budget for Obamacare is most likely to affect potential beneficiaries of the law, that is, people who have not yet signed up. So I would argue Trump is on safer political ground there.

But any steps that take health care away from people who already have it are more politically complicated. Arkansas, West Virginia and Kentucky all expanded Medicaid under Democratic governors but now have GOP chief executives. All those states could withdraw themselves from the Medicaid expansion. None of them have, because those governors know such a move would be politically perilous.

If Trump’s team used the executive branch to take steps that would gut protections for people already getting coverage through Obamacare, they would face similar political challenges.

Bipartisanship: Even if Senate Republicans drop their Obamacare repeal effort and never come back to it again, I’m skeptical that a bipartisan Obamacare “fix” can pass Congress. Republican members of the House and Senate have spent almost a decade attacking this law. They have told party activists it is terrible. Key groups within the party, like Americans for Prosperity, are deeply committed to ending Obamacare. Would House Speaker Paul Ryan want to bring some kind of “Obamacare stabilization” legislation to the floor and watch it pass even as the majority of Republican House members vote against it? I doubt it.

Trump implements Obamacare: To me, this is the easiest path — or at least the one with the fewest land mines. Team Trump would ratchet down the Obamacare wars, stop criticizing the law and take some steps to implement the ACA, but in a conservative way. (This might include measures like having the 19 states that have not currently expanded Medicaid opt in to the expanded program, but require recipients to have jobs or be in college or a training program, plus pay some small premiums.) Some of Trump’s remarks about Obamacare (he seems open to signing a bill that doesn’t really repeal the law as long as he can claim he fixed it) suggest that the president would not be opposed to such a path. And if he can flip-flop on DACA even though it involves one of his signature issues (tough immigration policies), surely he can flip on health care. Trump could then say that he fixed American health care.

PUERTO RICO AFTER HURRICANE MARIA

Nearly one week after hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, residents are still trying to get the basics of food, water, gas, and money from banks.Maria left widespread damage across Puerto Rico, with virtually the whole island without power or cell service and many streets still flooded

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4919774/Trump-tweets-destroyed-Puerto-Rico-criticism.html#ixzz4tlYZc0q9
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SEP 25 2017   2:00PM

Why Hurricane Maria is such a nightmare for Puerto Rico. Hurricane pushes long-suffering Puerto Rico to the edge: Many believe Congress shares some of the responsibility for the economic crisis. Facing months in the dark, ordinary life in Puerto Rico is “beyond reach”. With power out and cell service down, Puerto Ricans work to connect each other in Maria’s wake. Maria took a Puerto Rican radio station’s roof — but the hosts stayed on air anyway. Arecibo telescope damaged after Hurricane Maria slams Puerto Rico. What now for Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico faces mountain of obstacles on the road to recovery.

Aid begins to flow to hurricane-hit Puerto Rico. “If anyone can hear us, help”: Puerto Rico’s mayors describe widespread devastation from Hurricane Maria. How to help Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Black people aren’t keeping white Americans out of college. Rich people are.

WASHINGTON POST

Affirmative action is a consistent hobbyhorse on the right because it combines real anxieties with compelling falsehoods. College admission — especially to the elite institutions most often hit with affirmative action lawsuits — has become more selective and is an increasingly important factor in the creation and perpetuation of wealth and opportunity. Elite colleges serve as steppingstones into politics, finance, law and Silicon Valley; higher incomes tend to follow. Even so, 80 percent of top students who apply are accepted into at least one elite school, if not their No. 1 choice. But measures that help historically disadvantaged populations to take advantage of the same opportunity are nonetheless characterized as zero-sum.

What is essential to understand is that it’s not a vast crowd of black or brown people keeping white Americans out of the colleges of their choice, especially not the working-class white Americans among whom Trump finds his base of support. In fact, income tips the scale much more than race: At 38 top colleges in the United States, more students come from the top 1 percent of income earners than from the bottom 60 percent. 

Addressing inequalities in K-12 education, for instance, could help at-risk students of all races increase their chances of attending a top college — or any college at all. Policies such as property-tax-based funding for schools and the curiously slanted allocation of talented teachers (in Louisiana, for instance, a student in the poorest quartile of schools is almost three times as likely to be taught by an ineffective teacher as a student in the wealthiest quartile is) give a tremendous boost in college admissions to children from high-income families, often at the expense of their lower-income peers.

And right up to the application-writing doorstep, the beneficiaries of the biggest extra edge in admissions are more often than not the children of alumni. At Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown and Stanford universities, the acceptance rate for legacy applicants is between two and three times higher than the general admissions rate. ...Trump’s own wealthy-parent-sponsored education at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by the subsequent admission of three of his four adult children, makes that particular initiative seem unlikely.

Flashing warning sign for the GOP in the 2018 midterms?



The Democrats need to win 24 seats in the House and three in the Senate to take control of Congress next year. For many reasons — including the right’s success at mastering redistricting battles across the country — the party faces stiff head winds.

But Trump’s unpopularity gives Democrats hope that an intense rejection of his politics will overcome their structural disadvantages. Since 1966, when the incumbent president’s job approval has fallen below 50 percent, his party has lost an average of 40 House seats and five Senate seats in the midterms, according to Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, who put together a chart that illustrates the past bloodbaths. “Fifty percent has been the magic number,” he said.

Trump’s most recent approval rating in Gallup’s tracking poll: 37 percent.

How Democrats Can Wage War on Monopolies—and Win

Elizabeth Warren and her brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, provide a roadmap for the left to make antitrust reform a reality.

NEW REPUBLIC

THE CURRENT IMMIGRATION PROCESS OR WHY DON’T THEY JUST IMMIGRATE THE LEGAL WAY?

G92

For many Americans, whose ancestors migrated lawfully to the U.S., it is extremely frustrating that so many immigrants come today outside of lawful channels. Why don’t they just come the legal way, the way that my ancestors did?

Many immigrants do come lawfully, of course, but there are an estimated 10.8 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. who either entered unlawfully or, after entering lawfully on a temporary visa, overstayed. Why don’t they just come the legal way?

Those are good and reasonable questions. We have to understand both a bit about our country’s history and something of how current U.S. immigration law to answer them.

The reason that my ancestors migrated lawfully to the U.S.—mine came in the mid-19th century from Holland—is that there was no illegal way for them to come. You see, until 1882, there basically was no federal immigration law: anyone who arrived was welcome to make their life in the U.S.; there were no visas necessary, no consulting with a U.S. consulate before you departed; you boarded a boat and you built your new life in the U.S. That began to change in 1882, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, when the Congress decided that immigrants from China—who some argued were biologically inferior to Europeans—should be kept out altogether. Over the next four decades, we gradually restricted further groups—the poor, the sick, the uneducated, those suspected of holding questionable ideologies—until in 1924, Congress enacted a new immigration quota system that drastically limited immigration. It became extremely difficult to migrate, especially if you were from a country outside of the Northern and Western European countries that were granted the vast majority of the limited number of visas made available.

That changed again in 1965, when President Johnson signed into law a dramatic overhaul of the U.S. immigration system again. America could not and would not go back to an era of open borders, Johnson said as he signed the law, but the new law would base eligibility to immigrate not primarily on race or country of origin, but rather on family connections and employability.

In the nearly fifty years since that last overhaul, that system has worked fairly well for some people-spouses, minor children, and parents of adult US citizen and highly skilled workers with advanced degrees who could find an employer sponsor, for example-but, particularly as our economy has grown but visa quotas have not, the system is not working very well today.  Because the quota numbers are much lower than demand, family members can wait up to twenty years to be reunited through the proper legal channels in some cases.  

The employment-based system is equally dysfunctional, particularly for “low-skilled” workers: under the law, a maximum of 5,000 permanent visas are available per year for employer-sponsored workers other than those who are “highly skilled” or “holding advanced degrees.”  The problem is that our economy produces many, many times more jobs for people considered “low-skilled”–jobs that require little to no education, but a willingness to do very hard work–than there are visas.  To put things in perspective, back in 1910, 5,000 individuals, most of whom would today be classified as “low-skilled,” entered through Ellis Island in an average day.

We can tell people to wait their turn in line, but, for example, for a Mexican (or a Guatemalan, a Filipino, a Pole, or folks from many other countries) who does not have a college degree and has no close relatives who are U.S. citizens or green card-holders, there is almost certainly no line for them to wait in: without reform to the legal system, they will not be able to migrate “the legal way” to the U.S., not if they wait ten years, not if they wait fifty years. But if they manage to come unlawfully—and historically we have not made it so difficult to do so, though our borders are much more secure now than they have ever been—they will almost certainly find work—because even in a time of high unemployment, there are certain jobs that most Americans have not proven willing to do. For individuals living in poverty, desperate to support their families, that has been an attractive option. Everyone would prefer to pay a reasonable fee and be granted a visa, but that has not been an option for most of those presently here unlawfully. That, in short, is how we got into this mess, and why so many immigrants—most of them family-oriented people—have ended up undocumented in the shadows of our society.

For a more thorough answer to these questions, we recommend reading chapters 3 and 4 of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang (InterVarsity Press, 2009). To go even deeper in understanding how history and policy relate to this topic, check out the resource page for further book recommendations.

IMMIGRATION POLICY IN FOCUS: NO WAY IN

No Way In:
U.S. Immigration Policy Leaves Few Legal Options for Mexican Workers

by Rob Paral*

 Executive Summary
Current immigration policies are completely out of sync with the U.S. economy’s demand for workers who fill less-skilled jobs, especially in the case of Mexican workers. While U.S. immigration policies present a wide array of avenues for immigrants to enter the United States, very few of these avenues are tailored to workers in less-skilled occupations. It should come as no surprise, then, that immigrants come to or remain in the United States without proper documentation in response to the strong economic demand for less-skilled labor.
Among the findings of this report:

• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48 percent of all job openings, some 27 million positions, between 2002 and 2012 “are expected to be held by workers who have a high school diploma or less education.”

• Given that 12.5 percent of native-born adults age 25 and older lacked a high school diploma in 2003, compared to 32.8 percent of the foreign-born, it is clear that a large number of less-skilled jobs will be filled by immigrants.

• According to the 2003 American Community Survey, Mexicans comprised 30.7 percent of all foreign-born workers in the United States, but amounted to 88.8 percent of the foreign-born labor force in “farming, fishing, and forestry”; 60.2 percent in “construction and extraction”; and 51.6 percent in “building and grounds cleaning and maintenance.”

• Only one of the five categories of visas for permanent immigration status is tailored to less-skilled workers, and it is capped at 5,000 visas per year.

• Only two of the 16 employment-based visa categories for temporary immigrant status are available to workers in industries that require little or no formal training. One (H2A) is restricted to agricultural workers and the other (H2B) is not only capped at 66,000, but is limited to “seasonal” or otherwise “temporary” work that is defined so restrictively as to disqualify workers in many industries.

• Roughly 76 percent of Mexicans receiving temporary work visas in 2002 were recipients of only H2A and H2B visas. In other words, Mexican workers are crowded into categories in which few visas are available for most industries.

• The family-based immigration system is not capable of compensating for deficiencies in the employment-based system due to arbitrary numerical caps. In the case of Mexican nationals, wait times for visas under the “family preference” system are currently 7-10 years for the spouse of an LPR and 10-12 years for the unmarried adult child of a U.S. citizen.

The debate over whether or not the U.S. economy needs workers from abroad has intensified since President Bush proposed a new temporary worker program in a January 2004 speech. In May 2005, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduced legislation – the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act – that builds upon the idea of a temporary worker program by also proposing the expansion of pathways to lawful permanent residence for temporary workers (including those already in the country in an undocumented status). This legislation is based on an understanding that the current U.S. immigration system provides very few legal avenues for the admission of workers needed by the U.S. economy to fill less-skilled jobs, thereby creating incentives for undocumented immigration, primarily from Mexico, in response to actual labor demand.

U.S. immigration policies allow prospective immigrants (as opposed to temporary visitors) to legally enter the United States if visa petitions are filed on their behalf by an employer or a family member who is either a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident (LPR). However, there are extremely few employment visas available to accommodate the millions of immigrant workers whom the U.S. labor market demands as construction workers, factory workers, groundskeepers, and housekeepers. As a result, many workers from abroad enter or remain in the country either in an undocumented status or by using the family-based immigration system, which is by definition not designed to be an employment program. In order to correct this imbalance, the U.S. immigration system must be reformed to place a far greater emphasis on the U.S. economy’s demand for immigrant workers, especially those from Mexico, who fill less-skilled jobs.

There is a high demand in the United States for workers in jobs that require little or no formal education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there probably will be about 56 million job openings between 2002 and 2012, and 42 million of those, or 75 percent, “are projected to be filled by workers who do not have a bachelor’s degree and who are entering an occupation for the first time.” Moreover, 27 million of these positions “are expected to be held by workers who have a high school diploma or less education.” That amounts to roughly 48 percent of all job openings in the country. NOTE 1

Given that 12.5 percent of native-born adults age 25 and older lacked a high school diploma in 2003, compared to 32.8 percent of the foreign-born NOTE 2, it is clear that a large number of less-skilled jobs will be filled by immigrants. Some observers nevertheless contend that foreign-born workers in less-skilled jobs displace their native-born counterparts. However, the experience of the U.S. economy in the 1990s does not support that argument. The United States received the largest number of immigrants in its history during the 1990s NOTE 3, including many who lacked much formal education, yet unemployment and poverty rates among the native-born fell substantially. NOTE 4 Moreover, employment in about one-third of all U.S. job categories would have contracted during the 1990s if not for the presence of recently arrived immigrant workers, even if all unemployed U.S.-born workers with recent job experience in those categories had been available. NOTE 5

Recent data from the American Community Survey (ACS) indicate that foreign-born workers continue to be an indispensable part of the U.S. labor force. According to the ACS, the foreign-born accounted for 14.3 percent of all workers in the United States in 2003. However, foreign-born workers comprised a far higher percentage of the workforce in particular occupations. Foreign-born workers amounted to 39.7 percent of the U.S. labor force in “farming, fishing, and forestry occupations”; 29 percent in “building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations”; 21.7 percent in “production occupations” (which includes workers in assembly, food processing, textiles, and apparel); 21.5 percent in “construction and extraction occupations” (which includes mining); and 20 percent in “food preparation and serving related occupations.”

----
Despite the critical role played by foreign-born workers in many less-skilled job categories, the current immigration system offers very few employment-based visas for these workers. Nearly all of the visa “preference” categories that do exist for workers in less-skilled jobs are subject to arbitrary numerical caps that do not even come close to matching the level of labor demand in the U.S. economy. The result is that an enormous number of prospective employment-based immigrants are “crowded” into a small number of highly limited visa categories.

There are five preference categories of visas for permanent immigration status and only one is set aside for workers in less-skilled jobs. Four of the five favor immigrants with higher levels of education or financial capital and are therefore not relevant to less-skilled workers. The remaining category, the employment-based “third preference,” allots only 5,000 visas each year to workers in occupations that require less than two years of higher education, training, or experience. NOTE 7 This visa category, which is designated for “other workers,” is nearly the only employment-based avenue for permanent immigration available to workers in less-skilled jobs. About 71 percent of Mexicans receiving an employment-based visa for permanent immigration to the United States used this preference category in 2001. NOTE 8

Read more at IMMIGRATION POLICY IN FOCUS: NO WAY IN

British police are today hunting for the 'bucket bomber' who tried to blow up a rush hour Tube train and injured 29 people - but Donald Trump say the terror suspect was already in Scotland Yard's 'sights' before the attack. The crude IED could have killed dozens but failed to properly detonate and sent a 'wall of fire' through the carriage at Parsons Green Station injuring at least 22 people including a ten-year-old boy. Today officers are hunting for the bomber - and a potential cell - amid claims the terror suspect is armed with knives and may have left other devices. Terrified passengers were seen covered in blood with scorched hands, legs, faces and hair - others suffered crush injuries during a 'human stampede' as they 'ran for their lives' in west London at 8.20am. But the US President has sparked a diplomatic row after tweeting: 'Another attack in London by a loser terrorist and saying police should be 'more proactive'. Washington and London found themselves at loggerheads after the Manchester terror attack when US officials named the suicide bomber as Salman Abedi when police refused to say.