House Democrats need to admit that the impeachment hearings that were supposed to end Trump’s presidency have backfired spectacularly. Even after a series of televised testimonies and endless hours of cable news speculation, support for impeachment hasn’t hit a critical mass, and independents are defecting, according to several polls. There will more than likely be less than 50 votes in the Senate with the most independent Senators like Collins, Romney, Sinema, and Manchin looking increasingly less likely that they’ll vote to remove.
The truth of the matter is the American people want Congress to start doing the job of legislating and improving the lives of the public, instead of holding partisan hearings.
Congress should look at ways of continuing to improve the Trump economy with an immigration bill that helps employers find new workers and increases our GDP.
There have been over 7 million job openings in this country since late October 2018, but only 5.9 million people looking for work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These job openings being left vacant are costing billions of dollars to the GDP in lost revenue and taxes. Finding people to fill these jobs by changing our legal immigration system should be a priority of Congress.
Currently, our immigration system prioritizes family reunification instead of what skills applicants bring to the job market. As a result, we have too many applicants with limited technical skills and too few that can work in the areas we are sorely lacking employees. For decades Congress hasn’t been willing to update this archaic system that doesn’t push America forward economically into the 21st century.
It’s about time that Democrats in Congress put this immigration and job growth ahead of this partisan witch hunt and deliver for the American economy.
There are already plans they can build from, including a proposal launched by President Trump’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner back in May. The Kushner plan proposed would alter our immigration system to make it centered around the economy and 21st-century jobs. Kushner’s proposal would change America’s immigration system from being family-based to skills-based, the way countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore currently operate.
The plan would keep immigration rates flat but, increase the number of people who would bring the necessary skills to the job market to fill occupations Americans currently aren’t occupying. This would bring a boom to the American economy and create thousands of other lower-skilled service jobs as a result that could be filtered to Americans without a high school diploma or college degree and have a higher unemployment rate.
Along with altering our legal immigration system and stimulating the American economy, the bill would also secure the border, pay for the wall, and improve security around our ports of entry, which is very badly needed.
Now, this is one of many different proposals being offered. Sens. Cotton, Perdue, and Hawley have co-sponsored the RAISE Act, which would do many of the same things while cutting legal immigration to about 500,000 skills-based immigrants annually. Those types of ideas could be coupled with Sens. Durbin and Graham’s plan on protecting DACA recipients who are likely to lose their protective status after the Supreme Court makes it’s ruling in the next few months.
Either way, this is a needed reform that would benefit all Americans and certainly do more than what Congressional Democrats are doing currently. End the impeachment hearing and work on fixing our immigration system and our economy.
Jim Renacci represented Ohio’s 16th congressional district as a Republican from 2011 to 2019. He is the chairman of Ohio’s Future Foundation.
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