Becoming American Initiative Director Linda Chavez published this op-ed in The Daily Caller.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies — from making it more difficult to obtain a green card, to threatening to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Central American, Haitian and others who fled warfare and natural disasters in their countries of origin and have been working in the United States for years, to threatening the legal status granted through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — will stop economic expansion in its tracks. We need more foreign-born workers, not fewer. The only question is how best to attract them.
The 116th Congress should tackle this problem by passing modest immigration reform that includes legislation to grant legal status to DACA participants and extend protections to those TPS beneficiaries who are currently working and have built their lives here. Reform should also include a guest worker program that allows employers to hire enough foreign-born workers to fill jobs that Americans either cannot or will not do.
Finally, Congress must begin the process of a comprehensive overhaul of existing immigration law that moves to a system that benefits both those whom we admit and the nation. We need a system that is market-driven and flexible, that allows us to admit more immigrants when we need them, and one that encourages successful assimilation into the cultural and economic mainstream.
If we do it right, illegal immigration will continue to decline as we give those whose skills we need a path to come legally, whether as permanent residents or temporary workers. Immigration is fixable; the new Congress should make it a priority.
Read the full version at The Daily Caller.