Lori Trahan on Immigration

Work to fix broken immigration system & protect rights

Fulfill promises made to DREAMers; then comprehensive reform

Lori Loureiro Trahan: Congress is long overdue to pass comprehensive immigration reform. This means creating pathways to citizenship and fulfilling the promises we made to DREAMers. We must improve border security to target real threats, like drugs, human trafficking, terrorism, and weapons smuggling, and radically transform ICE to end the inhumanity that has been cruelly leveled against immigrants. We also need to continue to provide refuge and aid for those who are facing humanitarian crises in their own countries.

No citizenship question on 2020 Census form

Lori Loureiro Trahan: "In order to ensure resources and representation are distributed equitably in the next decade, we must have reliable Census data. The U.S. Census Bureau must be fully funded so that it can do the research and take the steps needed to properly reach hard-to-count populations. Politically motivated attempts to undercount certain populations, like the citizenship question, have no place on the Census.

Homeland Security head should resign over child detention

Opposes border wall, according to CC survey.

Project Vote Smart inferred whether candidates agree or disagree with the statement, 'Immigration: Do you support the construction of a wall along the Mexican border?' PVS self-description: "The Political Courage Test provides voters with positions on key issues. Historically, candidates have failed to complete our test due to the advice they receive from their advisors and out of fear of negative attack ads."

PVS:Let illegal immigrants apply for citizenship.

Project Vote Smart inferred whether candidates agree or disagree with the statement, 'Immigration: Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship? PVS self-description: "The Political Courage Test provides voters with positions on key issues. Historically, candidates have failed to complete our test due to the advice they receive from their advisors and out of fear of negative attack ads."

Increase both high-skill and family-based visa caps.

Legislative Summary:This bill increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of such visas available that year to 15%, and eliminates the 7% cap for employment-based immigrant visas. It also removes an offset that reduced the number of visas for individuals from China. The bill also establishes transition rules for employment-based visas from FY2020-FY2022, by reserving a percentage of EB-2 (workers with advanced degrees or exceptional ability), EB-3 (skilled and other workers), and EB-5 (investors) visas for individuals not from the two countries with the largest number of recipients of such visas. Of the unreserved visas, not more than 85% shall be allotted to immigrants from any single country.

Explanation from the Countable.US: Under the current immigration system, immigrants from any one country can claim no more than 7% of the 140,000 employment-based green cards issued annually to foreign nationals working in the U.S. This significantly disadvantages immigrants from larger countries that more immigrants come from.

For example, China (population 1.3 billion) and India have large backlogs of workers wishing to immigrate to and work in the U.S., but they have the name visa caps as countries such as Iceland or Estonia (population 1.3 million), which have both much smaller populations and far fewer citizens seeking to immigrate to the U.S.

The net effect of this is that immigrants from India and China can face decades-long waits, averaging 2-3 times the wait times for immigrants from other countries, for green cards, and many have to return home because they can't get permanent residency; meanwhile, countries such as Iceland and Estonia never come close to reaching their visa limit caps.

Legislative outcome Roll call 437 in House on 7/10/2019 passed 365-65-2; referred to Committee in Senate 7/9/2019; no action as of 1/1/2020.

Sponsored bill to disallow religion-based immigration ban.