Story highlights Two senators plan to roll back legal immigration in a three-pronged approach

The targeted bill falls in line with President Donald Trump's blue-collar appeal

Washington (CNN) As the immigration debate rages with a focus on building a wall along the US-Mexico border, two Republican senators proposed a bill Tuesday that would take on an entirely different issue: legal immigration.

Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia argue the current amount of legal immigration is bloated with low-skilled labor and has contributed to the declining wages of Americans with high school diplomas or less.

"It's pulling the rug out from underneath them, and unless we reverse this trend, we're going to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American dream is always just out of reach," Cotton said at a news conference introducing the bill.

The senators want to roll back legal immigration in a three-pronged approach that aims to cut the number of immigrants by half, to 500,000 annually. They say their plan would not touch visa programs for high-skilled workers.

The targeted bill falls in line with President Donald Trump's blue-collar appeal and "America first" promises. Cotton, a rising Republican star, said he's been in "close contact" with Trump's staff as they've worked on the details of the bill and that he's spoken with Trump about it as recently as Tuesday morning.

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