Posted on December 14 2016
The pro-trade and pro-people wings of the Republican Party are set to clash over the issue of lawful migration in the US. This tussle could turn out to be as disruptive as the tussle on the issue of unlawful migration.
While the pro-trade faction is in favor of increasing the work authorization to immigrants, the pro-people faction is against this move by claiming that Native Americans are being deprived of the job opportunities.
The argument line is that whether overseas immigrants are the source of growth of American economy as claimed by the pro-trade faction or they result in an unjust contest for the US citizens.
This debate is resulting in a serious division in the pro-trade and pro-people factions of the Republican Party.
This division is quite identical to the factionalism created over the issue of unrestricted commercial activities supported by the pro-trade wing as opposed by the pro-people faction which is now emerging stronger under the faction led by Donald Trump which claims that this is not in favor of the native US job seekers.
The lobby in favor of free commerce activities that supports the progressive and liberalized migration policies is watching the scenario whether the US government led by Trump will use its executive power to transform the lawful migration policies. It is quite watchful as to whether Congress will witness support increasing in favor of liberal immigration policies that is being backed by the farm, technology, and business lobbies.
For instance, the work authorization under H1-B visa provides visas for overseas skilled immigrants that are fixed at 85,000 visas for around ten years now. The business lobby is in favor of increasing these visas as the fact reveals that the current number of the H1-B visas falls acutely short of the demands.
The visa processing trends in the last four years have revealed that the firms have filed far more applications than 85,000 in the first week itself, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
The opponents of H1-B visa claim that this visa program permits the Native American workers to be replaced by overseas immigrants. They, in fact, point out that specifically the international firms into outsourcing alternate the immigrants throughout the US for training purposes.
The work authorization based green cards has been fixed at 140,000 per year after the ratification of the Immigration law of 1990. There have been mixed opinions were in some claiming that the number is low while others contend that it is high.
Farm industry and some other sectors have the provision of provisional visiting workers and some of them support increasing these visas and making them more flexible.
The Trump administration will have more opponents of liberal visa policies in the key positions. This is quite evident from the selection of Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama. It is widely known that Mr. Sessions has been a vocal opponent of increasing visa for immigrants.
In stark opposition to this anti-immigration faction is the pro-trade group that is led by John Boehner, the former Speaker and Paul Ryan the current Speaker who have supported increasing work authorization for overseas immigrants.
The pro-trade Republicans also demand that the visas approved for various sectors such as highly skilled workers in technology that are in demand in the companies in Silicon Valley, farming sector workers, marine food industry and allied sectors.
The majority of the representatives of the Democratic Party have expressed their support for these reforms to the US visa regime, though some worker unions have expressed concerns over the impact on Native American workers.
Tags:
Legal Immigration
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