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By: EFE Updated 15 Sea 2022, 20: 48 pm EDT
During a hearing on removing barriers to legal immigration and “strengthening communities and the economy ”, Democratic and Republican senators recognized the need to reform the United States immigration system.
“The immigration system that Congress has designed routinely separates families across borders,” said Democratic Senator Álex Padilla, chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Security.
“We have a dysfunctional immigration system that has not been updated in over three decades . This has devastating consequences for migrants, families and the economy,” he added.
The Democratic legislator also referred to the situation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country illegally when they were minors and who may “be forced to leave the only country they have known.”
Congress sets limits on the number of lawful permanent resident visas issued each year, with 800,03 for relatives of legal residents and 140,000 linked to employment. But the rules of the Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) do not allow any country to receive more than 7% of the total.
Senator John Cornyn, the highest-ranking Republican on the Subcommittee, argued that among his co-religionists there is “a strong appetite for a reform of the immigration system.”
“But these efforts have been completely derailed by the migration crisis on the southern border,” he added. He argued that since President Joe “Biden arrived at the White House there has been a huge increase in the arrival of migrants at the border.”
“This government does not care or take this immigration seriously. The Biden administration has rolled out the welcome mat and has created incentives for illegal immigration,” he asserted.
Cornyn alluded to “the contribution that immigrants make the economy, whose growth would have been significantly lower in the last three decades without that contribution”.
For his part, Democrat Dick Durbin pointed out that there are 4,000,000 of foreigners who have been waiting for years for permanent residence that allows them to reunite with their relatives immigrated to the United States.
One point on which Republicans and Democrats agreed was the one related to the difficulty that the quota system that assigns a certain number of immigration visas to different countries presents for the legal immigration of qualified foreigners. .
A recent study by the Baker Institute for Public Policy, at Rice University (Texas), indicated that the US immigration system does not provide the country’s economy with enough skilled workers to maintain growth and the ability to compete on a global scale.
Durbin also referred to the refugee crisis in Ukraine and noted that Poland has taken in some two million Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country.
“Polish families have welcomed these refugees into their homes,” he added. “And Poland is not the only country in Europe that has done it.
I wonder how we would react in a similar situation? “, he questioned.
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