What Is The 'RAISE' Act?

What Is The Proposed RAISE Act?

On August 2, 2017, President Trump promoted a new Senate Bill drafted by Senators David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas known as the ‘RAISE’ Act.

‘RAISE’ is an acronym for “Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy” Act.

The stated purpose of the Bill is to improve the American economy by limiting the number of immigrants admitted into our country.

A perhaps more valuable use of this Bill is to ‘RAISE’ our awareness of the more fundamental underpinnings of America’s unique immigration system.  If it causes us to pause and reflect on these core principles of American identity and values, it will have served a noble purpose.

Most political observers suggest that this Bill is not likely to pass Congress; nevertheless, an analysis of this Bill gives us an opportunity to examine: ‘what would constitute a healthy immigration policy in the U.S.’?  We will leave the political discussion to those who are more knowledgeably equipped to do so; the purpose of this article is to explore what we need in immigration policy to fit the unique history and present cultural pressures of American society today.

A very strong and simple narrative upon which this Bill rests is the easily accepted notion that Americans are competing for job openings and that the addition of more immigrants would make it more difficult for Americans to get these jobs.

It is, of course, more complicated than that, but rather than debate the economic consequences of immigration – which is a fact-driven analysis that supports various dimensions on both sides of the debate – it may be even more helpful to look at the core values implicated in the Bill.  It is a point that will conclude our discussion, but to begin, it may be helpful to compare the provisions of the Bill to the current existing law.

Thus, the place to begin is the actual language in the Bill.

The Preamble of the Bill states 4 objectives:  “To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to

 

1. Establish a skills-based immigration points system,
    
2. to focus family -sponsored immigration on spouses and minor children,

     3.  to eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, [and]

 

    4.   to set a limit on the number of refugees admitted annually to the

United States, and for other purposes.”

 

We will go through each objective separately.

Today we will address the ‘skills-based immigration points system’.

 

1. Skills-Based Immigration Points System –

The first objective of the Bill is to amend the current Immigration and Nationality Act to establish a ‘skills-based immigration points system’.  The intent here is to ‘filter’ the types of persons coming to the U.S. to only those who can offer their education, skills and salary to meaningfully participate in and prosper the U.S. economy.  The immigration benefit provided is presumably a ‘green card’ – or Lawful Permanent Residency in the U.S.

Under the provisions of the Bill, a person accrues ‘points’ based upon age, education, English proficiency, extraordinary achievement and salary related to a job offer.  A person who accumulates a minimum of 30 points is eligible to be placed in an ‘Applicant Pool’ for up to one year.

An applicant calculates his or her points based upon a strong showing under the metrics of age, education, English proficiency, extraordinary achievement and salary for a job offered.

For example, a young person aged 22 – 25 accrues 8 points, while an older person, aged 41 through 45 accrues only 4 points.  Likewise, someone with a bachelor’s degree from a foreign institution is allowed 5 points, but a person with a master’s degree in the U.S. in a STEM discipline is entitled to 8 points.  The English exam is scored on ‘deciles’ where the higher the decile, the more points someone gets.

If an applicant reaches 30 points, he or she may file an application with USCIS and is placed in a ‘pool’ of other applicants and sorted on the basis of an applicant’s overall score.

Every 6 months, USCIS will invite the highest ranked applicants to file an immigrant visa petition for a visa.  There would be only 140,000 visas available each year, so the invitation will go out to a number that will be expected to result in 70,000 visas being issued for that 6 month period.

 

To assess the effectiveness of such a ‘points-based’ system, we should consider the present system in light of the Bill’s stated objective of helping the U.S. Economy.

Our present Employment-Based Visa system offers a number of different types of ‘temporary’ visas to employees with the opportunity to eventually apply for an immigrant visa – (or ‘green card’).

Types of Nonimmigrant Visas Available Under The Present System

To make this a manageable comparison, we will look only at those nonimmigrant visas that are comparable to the ‘highly-skilled’ sector contemplated by the Bill that also provide a pathway to a ‘green card’, (lawful permanent residency).

One of the most sought-after nonimmigrant visas is the ‘H-1B’ visa for foreign workers in a ‘specialty occupation’.  By legal definition, a ‘specialty occupation’ is one in which the job requires a person with at least a college bachelor’s degree in that occupational field to perform the work.  There is an annual allotment of 65,000 H-1B visas available each year. 

Another visa is an ‘L-1A’ visa for foreign employees who are either multinational executives or managers, and the ‘L-1B’ visa for foreign employees who have unique ‘specialized knowledge’ in the specific field or work required by an employer.

It is important to note that both of these require the foreign employee to work only for the employer that sponsored him or her for the visa.  Thus, the visa process is targeted to specific job openings for specific job duties that an employer needs filled.

For the H-1B visa, the demand for specific employees is so great that in the most recent fiscal year when H-1B visas were available, employers filed over 235,000 petitions for only 65,000 visas.  When one considers that the cost of filing an H-1B petition includes a $500.00 ‘Fraud Detection Fee’, and $1,500.00 ‘Education and Training Fee’ and a $460.00 ‘petition filing fee’, not to mention additional legal fees, the cost of filing an H-1B visa petition is not taken lightly.  Furthermore, the employer must show the U.S. Dept. of Labor that it will be paying the foreign worker as much as or more than American workers – (to insure that the wages of American workers are not ‘undercut’ by hiring foreign workers at lower pay).  All of these factors give an economic incentive for U.S. employers to hire U.S. workers before considering the hire of a foreign worker.  Despite these additional costs, the fact that U.S. employers still filed over 235,000 petitions with the hope of having their applications randomly chosen for processing gives a pretty clear indication of the current inability of U.S. employers to fill crucial positions in their companies.

The ‘EB-5’ visa is known as the ‘job-creation’ visa.  This specialized visa generally currently requires an investment of at least $500,000 or $1 million, (depending upon other factors) in a new commercial enterprise in the U.S. and proof that the investment will result in the creation of at least 10 full-time jobs for American Workers.

Also, in 2016, the prior Administration issued an executive order providing for ‘entrepreneurs’ who could provide a ‘significant public benefit’ by creating or maintaining a new commercial enterprise to be admitted into the U.S. to manage these investments.  The Order was purposely suited for high-tech entrepreneurs and was set to go into effect on July 17, 2017.  This executive order was ‘suspended’ by the Trump Administration on July 10^th for review and possible rescission or implementation on March 14, 2018.  

So to make a comparison between the proposed Bill’s intent to let in only 140,000 persons who reach a high score on age, education, job salary and/or extraordinary achievements, and the current system that offers employers the opportunity to seek foreign workers for specific needs, one needs to consider the benefits from an employer’s perspective.

First, one might consider whether average companies who typically utilize the H-1B, L-1A or L-1B visa programs to meet specific specialized needs would be able to compete with the largest well-sourced corporations for the top 140,000 individuals who might apply under the proposed bill.  (Remember, over the course of 5 days this past April, employers of all sizes filed over 235,000 petitions just for H-1B visas.).  Second, consider the challenge of employers planning to fill a position with the uncertainty of not knowing where a prospective employee might stand in the ‘applicant pool’, especially considering that only 70,000 visas would become available each 6-month period; (and that the family members of a successful applicant are also included in that limited number of 70,000).  It might also be useful to consider whether the top individuals who attain a high score under these metrics actually align with the specific needs of employers if they came to the U.S.  The proposed Bill does not necessarily clarify this, but presumably, a person in the ‘applicant pool’ does not necessarily have to work for a specific employer and might otherwise compete on the open marketplace for other employment. 

If the objective of the proposed Bill is to land the world’s ‘best and the brightest’ in the U.S. so that they can contribute to the American economy and possibly create new opportunities for U.S. workers, it is fair to question whether the sample of current immigration programs described above also seek the same goals.  A fair criticism of the current immigration system is that these immigration programs do a poor job of meeting these same goals.  In fact, when one considers that 2 out of every 3 H-1B petitions are rejected because there are too few visas to go around, and that many high-tech companies are moving operations to other countries because they cannot bring the world’s ‘best and brightest’ to the U.S., it is apparent that seeking creative solutions to identify and secure the highest qualifying individuals to come to the U.S. is a crucial need.  The proposed Bill helpfully exposes the flaws and limitations of our current employment-based immigration programs.

Here's hoping that the dialogue opened by the presentation of the prospective ‘RAISE’ Bill will help invigorate a bi-partisan legislative solution to our poorly functioning immigration system for U.S. employers.

 

Next:  ‘The Focus on Family-Sponsored Immigration for Spouses and Minor Children’