Legal immigration laws should be changed to allow more "highly-skilled" people into the country, rather than sticking the controversial visa lottery and so-called chain migration, Sen. Orrin Hatch writes in an opinion piece for Fox News.
"For the last two decades, debates over immigration reform have largely focused on illegal immigration. In recent weeks, however, the debate has increasingly turned to proposals dealing with legal immigration and the way we award green cards," Hatch writes.
In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump laid out four "pillars" of a new immigration plan. The first two deal with illegal immigration and border security.
Hatch focuses on the other two pillars: Ending the visa lottery, which grants green cards to 50,000 people yearly from countries with low rates of immigration, and revising family-based immigration, which allows hundreds of thousands of additional green cards based on family connections.
He said he wants a system that "focuses more on education and skills than on country of origin and family connections" because "America needs the world’s best and brightest to keep itself at the forefront of innovation."
Hatch recently introduced the Immigration Innovation Act, or I-Squared, "to ensure that employers are able to hire — and retain — workers with the skills they need…. by increasing the number of available high-skilled visas and by streamlining the process."
He said he is not calling for a reduction in legal immigration.
"What I am calling for is a smarter, better calibrated legal immigration system that gives greater priority to education and skill level" to "prepare our country for success for decades to come."
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