A few years ago, the following would have been only a dream. Today, it is a reality.

On July 26, the President of the United States publicly came out and endorsed a Senate bill to sharply reduce legal immigration, on the basis that mass migration into the United States hurts American workers. Read the full text here.

Here’s what the bill will do, as summarized by the White House:

1. The RAISE Act replaces the current permanent employment-visa framework with a skills-based system that rewards applicants based on their individual merits.

2. The RAISE Act reduces overall immigration numbers to limit low-skilled and unskilled labor entering the United States.

3. The RAISE Act prioritizes immediate family members of United States residents, including spouses and minor children, but ends preferences for extended family members and adult children.

4. The RAISE Act eliminates the outdated Diversity Visa lottery system, which serves questionable economic and humanitarian interests.

5. The RAISE Act limits permanent resident status for refugees to 50,000 a year, in line with the 13-year average.

The Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy, or RAISE Act, was introduced into the Senate judiciary committee Feb. 13 by Southern senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. It still needs a lot of help to make it through committee, win approval of the Senate, and then win in the House. But with Trump’s endorsement July 26, Congress has been put on notice that this immigration reduction proposal is the way forward in a MAGA administration.

Consider the following quotes by President Donald Trump at the press briefing with Sens. Cotton and Perdue July 26:

For decades, the United States was operated and has operated a very low-skilled immigration system, issuing record numbers of Green Cards to low-wage immigrants. This policy has placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources…it has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers. This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.

Here’s what the bill’s sponsors had to say when they introduced it in February.

“We are taking action to fix some of the shortcomings in our legal immigration system—returning to our historically normal levels of legal immigration will help improve the quality of American jobs and wages,” said Georgia’s Sen. David A. Perdue Jr.

“There has been a generation’s-long decline in blue collar wages,” Cotton said. “The natural effect of having low-skills and no-skills workers in this country is going to be a tighter labor market that is going to put more upward pressure on wages of working folks.”

Their remarks are straight out of the Numbers USA and FAIR talking points. Better yet, they’re straight out of VDare and AmRen.

Trump et al. have framed the immigration policy argument in terms that most American voters understand: WIIFM, or “What’s In It For Me?”

Immigration policy should be about how it benefits, or harms, American citizens. Trump explicitly stated that the current policy “has not been fair to our people…” He’s using the fairness argument — which our enemies constantly use in order to bludgeon us with their fake morality — in terms of its real purpose, which is to ensure that one’s own people are fairly protected under law. Shifting the burden of proof to our enemies by changing the way the debate is framed, i.e., the narrative, is very important. When the President of the United States is using your narrative, you are winning.

The only improvement to this would be to add an ethnic component favoring native-born whites and limiting immigration to foreign whites. But compared to the alternative of endless Third World immigration, a la Angela Merkel, who are we to complain? We will just keep patiently pushing the Overton Window. The RAISE Act deserves our support because it is a huge step in the right direction.

And when Leftists complain about the evils of white racism per this bill, just remember that limiting immigration is good not only for white Americans but for poorer, non-white American citizens. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand. The Democratic Party and progressive/social justice movements have not got the real, economic interests of the poor in mind. They simply advocate for the destruction of Western civilization and bleeding white productive workers dry. If they really had the interests of the little guy (aka the poor of any race) in mind, they would support immigration reduction proposals so that the people already here could have a better shot at getting, keeping, or creating good-paying jobs.

The usual patriotic suspects have come out and fully endorsed the RAISE Act.

Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein: “The RAISE Act ends chain-migration by limiting family-based immigration to the nuclear family and replacing the employment-based system with a skills-based point structure.”

NumbersUSA President Roy Beck: “Our recent polling confirms that American voters overwhelmingly want far less immigration because they know mass immigration creates unfair competition for American workers. Seeing the President standing with the bill’s sponsors at the White House gives hope to the tens of millions of struggling Americans in stagnant jobs or outside the labor market altogether.”

It may be, as Gandalf said, a fool’s hope. But it is hope indeed.