Donald Trump announced plans for new immigration laws on Wednesday that would cut the total number of immigrants admitted to the US by half over a decade and prioritize those who can speak English or are well educated.

The proposed legislation, unveiled at the White House, would also cap the number of refugees admitted to the US every year at 50,000, and eliminate the diversity visa lottery, which currently allocates 50,000 visas a year to residents of countries that do not currently send significant numbers of migrants to the US.

An estimate provided by the office of one of the bill’s sponsors, the Republican senator Tom Cotton, stated that if passed, the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (Raise) Act would reduce the number of immigrants admitted to the US by 41% in its first year and by 50% over a 10-year-period.

Speaking alongside Cotton and another co-sponsor, the Republican senator David Perdue, Trump described the bill as “legislation that would represent the most significant reform to our immigration system in a half century” and heralded it as a the fulfillment of his campaign promise to create a “merit-based immigration system that protects American workers and taxpayers”.

Although Trump has long been vocal about illegal immigration, making a wall on the US-Mexico border his signature campaign policy, he has also advocated revamping legal immigration.

In his February address to Congress, the president advocated “reforming our system of legal immigration” and shifting to a merit-based system, citing Canada and Australia as models.

Cotton, from Arkansas, echoed Trump’s rhetoric, making a populist case for his legislation. The current immigration system shows “we’re not committed to working-class Americans”, he said, claiming it put “great downward pressure on people who work with their hands and feet” and meant the US “lose[s] out on very best talent coming to our country”.

Cotton and Perdue first introduced the bill in February and Cotton told reporters then that he had discussed the legislation with Trump as “a concept”.

Despite Trump’s support, however, the legislation has bipartisan detractors and is unlikely to pass Congress in its current form.

While Republicans have long been united on the issue of illegal immigration, legal immigration is far more divisive for them.

Many pro-business Republicans have long supported legal immigration, and the new legislation is likely to stoke the divides between this wing of the party and more populist Republicans.



Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a frequent critic of Trump’s, denounced the proposed reduction in legal immigration, which he said would “be devastating to [South Carolina’s] economy, which relies on this immigrant workforce”.

For the Democrats, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters the proposal to cut legal immigration “doesn’t make much sense” and said his party would not support the plan.

“This is different than illegal immigration,” Schumer said. “This creates jobs in America. This helps America, and we think it’s a non-starter.”

Later, the senior White House aide Stephen Miller got into a heated exchange while discussing the policy with reporters. Speaking at the lectern in the White House briefing room, Miller clashed with the CNN anchor Jim Acosta.

Acosta asked Miller if the proposal would violate the spirit of the poem New Colossus, inscribed at the base the Statue of Liberty, which includes the line: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

The White House criticized Acosta for his “cosmopolitan bias” and attacked him for asking about what the bill would do to the racial composition of immigrants to the United States by saying: “That is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things said you’ve ever said.”

Miller later apologized to Acosta before leaving the lecturn “if things got heated” but added that the CNN anchor “made some pretty rough insinuations.”

Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino