Republican Senator, Tom Cotton wants to see President-Elect, Donald Trump raising the wages of American workers by making use of his electoral mandate to cut the number of low-skilled legal immigrants. In an opinion piece published in the New York Times, Cotton says that the country’s immigration policy has served the powerful and wealthy for too long and that a policy focusing on the rest of the US is now needed.
Cotton claims that the election result gives Trump a mandate from the American people to end the current immigration system and create a new one that has benefits, higher wages, and greater security for American workers among its primary concerns.
Around four million young Americans join the workforce every year. The federal government also provides work permits to approximately one million new legal immigrants during that time, and a further million permits are given to temporary contract workers. From 2014, there were around 42.4 million immigrants, both legal and illegal, living in the US. These included contract workers, refugees, and students amounting to about 13.3 percent of the population. A further 8.7 million immigrants have come to the US since the start of the housing recession in 2016.
Cotton claims that the labor market does not have a special ability to suspend the laws of supply and demand and wants to see the emphasis on high-skilled immigration while cutting down on other immigration to help increase working class wages.