Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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The Trump administration is proposing to increase merit-based legal immigration to 57% and half of those would be based on family and humanitarian grounds, in an effort to overhaul the existing system.
Senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner, who is also the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, said having an immigration policy that would attract talented and meritorious people from across the world would create over $500 billion in tax revenues over 10 years. “It brings in a lot of people that are paying into the social safety nets. Not people who are coming in and then immediately taking from the social safety nets, which right now have to support Americans who are currently citizens,” Mr. Kushner told the Cabinet during a meeting at the White House. At the direction of Mr. Trump, Mr. Kushner is leading the immigration reform project, which he said was now into its final stages. Mr. Kushner rued that America’s immigration system was very outdated compared to some of the peer countries that it competes with for talent. He said just 12% of people become legal immigrants through merit-based system right now. Compare that to some of our peer countries like Canada. They’re at 53%, New Zealand at 59%, Australia 63%, Japan at 52%,” he said. “Under President Trump’s proposal, we’ll go to 57%, which puts right in the range and it will make us competitive.” Last year 1.1 million people became citizens. “We are keeping the number the same. But we want to change the composition of what’s that made up of,” he said.
