Nolan Rappaport writes in The Hill:
“Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently introduced the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, which would allow the states to establish and manage their own guest worker programs for nonimmigrant workers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
According to Johnson, “We need to recognize that a one-size-fits-all federal model for visas or guest workers doesn’t work. Let the states manage the visas, allocate them to the industries that need the workers, set prevailing wage rates.”
This program would blur the distinction between federal and state immigration responsibilities and require information sharing to an unprecedented extent, which would eliminate the justification for sanctuary cities. The states could no longer claim that enforcement was a solely federal responsibility.
How many visas?
The bill would allocate 5,000 renewable three-year visas for each state and give them a share of 245,000 additional visas which would be distributed on a population basis. Also, the guest workers would be allowed to bring their spouses and children, and there would not be a limit on the visas for family members. Thus, the program could bring more than a million aliens to the country each year.
The guest workers would have to work and reside in the state sponsoring them, but the states would be allowed to enter into compacts with other states to share the workers.
The states would be required to notify the DHS Secretary when guest workers fail to comply with the terms of their status “when the State is made aware of such failure.”
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Go over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete analysis.
I can’t see Congress or the Administration wanting to give the states this much authority in the area of immigration.
PWS
06-14-17