SENATE BILL: Immigration Reform Act of 2020 (Passed)

[YE]

Don’t think I support this bill actually but I’ll write more later.

[YE]

I don't support that restriction of family visas.

I object to the amendment.

As for the bill itself, I may have more of a problem of letting large tech companies have larger control on our immigration system but I also understand the economic need for it to a certain extent.

[YE]

Also family reunification visas are limited to 480,000 per year per this and is about 65% of immigrants in total. This would drop it down to 300,000. Not on board with this probably.

[YE]

I don't support that restriction of family visas.

I object to the amendment.

As for the bill itself, I may have more of a problem of letting large tech companies have larger control on our immigration system but I also understand the economic need for it to a certain extent.

Are you objecting to Scott's amendment, Jimmy's amendment or both?

Jimmy's.

[YE]

Nay.

[YE]

Aye.

[YE]

Well with YE objecting in full I will not bother doing a partial objection though I may take the parts from Jimmy's amendment that I agree with and compiling them into a counterproposal.

As for the bill itself, I may have more of a problem of letting large tech companies have larger control on our immigration system but I also understand the economic need for it to a certain extent.

Also family reunification visas are limited to 480,000 per year per this and is about 65% of immigrants in total. This would drop it down to 300,000. Not on board with this probably.

Could you elaborate on how this would let "large tech companies have larger control on our immigration system"?

As for that, yeah; that is (part of) the point of the bill; this would shift Atlasia's focus on immigration from family reunification to skills-based immigration. I think overall the numbers actually expand the number of visas by a very small amount if I am doing my math correctly

Popping in to the old chamber to advocate against repealing section 5 of Come out of the Shadows.

Those visas are specific to Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. They are part of a program combined with 5 years of high priority foreign development assistance to discourage illegal immigration by improving living conditions there, improving Atlasia's relationship with their governments, and creating a culture of legal immigration between Atlasia and those three countries. It doesn't impact immigration from other countries.

I'd like to ask Senators to reconsider repealing that.

Given that section has a sunset provision and how it has been in place for a long time already, I suppose we could just make it expire a year earlier (so in 2020 instead of 2021); and possibly amend the start of this bill to January 1st 2021.

The more merit based the immigration system, the more control large employers have in like Silicon Valley over hiring immigrants and I'm not sure it's worth cutting back on family immigration just to increase the number of merit visas (which to be fair for better or for worse is also often necessary).

[YE]

With that said, catching up on things here, the latest amendment from Tack is a bit of an improvement.

[YE]

I think we should add an amendment to put in place a board that includes all of the interests that Yankee mentioned.

I'd be down for that for sure.

Also in regards to what tack said (don't feel like quoting him in a separate post, just because it's used in a (by US standards at least) liberal country in Canada doesn't mean it should be used everywhere And big corporations hiring workers from other countries isn't ideal for workers here (though obviously sometimes workers here are not qualified for such position especially in certain fields so this is a bit of a balancing act as I've said previously).

[YE]

If we are going to roll forward with such a board then we should decide who all should be on it? Business and labor interests are the easy ones. Is there anyone else?

I'd say labor and small business.

[YE]

So how would these boards work, exactly?  Do they vote on who should be allowed in?  What if the business side overwhelmingly supports hiring certain workers and labor doesn't?

I second this question and I'd add, what would be their exact point? Just setting the quotas? Or would they be able to modify the requirements somehow?

Yeah I'm not exactly sure what the text could look like here.

[YE]

Abstain.