Remarks by President Trump in Cabinet Meeting | Eastern North Carolina Now

    This bill also - it creates the gold standard for border security. It was not designed by the politicians. We have a lot of input from politicians, but we went and spent a lot of time with the border security professionals and they told us what they need to fully secure the border.

    But the border is not just about illegal immigration, it's also about keeping drugs out of the country, making sure that we're scanning all the different vehicles and packages that come to the country, and also expediting the commerce.

    As our economy continues to grow and we have more and more packages that are exported and imported through our borders - our infrastructure is woefully out of date, and we want to make sure that we're able to facilitate this trade in a very, very secure but expedited fashion.

    Next slide.

    I spoke to all of you last time about the objectives that the President has for his immigration plan. We obviously want to make sure that we fully secure our borders, that we protect American wages. For the first time in almost 20 years, because of the President's policies, Americans' wages are rising and they're rising the fastest for the people who are most vulnerable and in the lowest wage categories.

    We have - for the first time, we have more jobs available than people who are searching for jobs. And we're bringing more and more people who aren't in the workforce into the workforce.

    We want an immigration system - the current system imports a lot of low-wage labor. We want to ensure we're bringing in people who will grow GDP, create jobs, and do this in a way where we're not putting downward pressure on wages at the lower levels. We want to attract the best and brightest and we want to welcome people to this country.

    We want to prioritize the unification of immediate families from an immigration point of view. We want to make sure that we have labor in critical industries that we have in our country. We have so much growth in so many areas, but we need - we have a lot of labor shortages in different industries. We want to make sure that we're bringing people in who are filling those gaps. And then we also have to make sure that we reserve our humanitarian values.

    Right now, a lot of people take advantage of the largesse of America. We're the number-one contributor to resettling refugees throughout the world. We've taken in a tremendous amount of refugees, but we have a lot of people who are abusing the system and using it as a way to get - to cut the line and to go in front of a system that was designed to really favor illegal immigration.

    Next slide.


    So, basically, the two pillars of what we put together - and it's a very, very detailed proposal - is going to be the merit-based system, which I'll go into more later, and then also the border security. And we have - I think these are both systems that we both be very - that we could all be very proud of.

    Next slide.

    So the infrastructure at the border is very important. What this does is it fully secures our border. It completes the wall. Right now we have over 400 miles of wall that has either been built or is going to be built. And that does a lot of the job. This would finish the job.

    We want to make sure that all the ports of entry are fully modernized. We want to target that 100 percent of the people and goods in the vehicles that cross the border are fully scanned. We have the technology to do this, but just have not appropriated the resources to do that.

    This will allow us to really stop all the drugs and counterfeit goods that are going through our ports of entry. And we want to make sure also for business that the trade is much more - goes through quicker and is facilitated properly. And we also want to make sure that there's a self-sustaining revenue fund so that we're not in a position where we allow this critical infrastructure to atrophy like we've allowed it to happen over time.

    And then, finally, we want to make sure that we fully enforce the law. We have to fix some of the laws, which this bill does. It eliminates the magnates. But we want to make sure that it's fully enforced. And the Border Patrol professionals - who really are amazing people, and I've had the real privilege to work with - they do an incredible job to keep us all safe, that they have all the resources they need to be successful.

    Next slide.

    So this was the slide that has the biggest impact on me and why this is such a critical thing to securing America's future. Whereas if you look at the top of the slide, you'll see that America's system is a very outdated system compared to some of the peer countries that we compete with. We compete with these countries on trade, and we're also competing with these countries for talent.

    Right now, just 12 percent of people become legal immigrants. Last year we had 1.1 million people become citizens. That's a great thing. We are keeping the number the same. And - but we want to change the composition of what's that made up of. Twelve percent of the people who are coming in are filling economic needs that we have. Compare that to some of our peer countries like Canada; they're at 53 percent. New Zealand at 59 percent. Australia, 63 percent. And Japan at 52 percent.

    Under President Trump's proposal, we'll go to 57 percent, which puts right in the range and it will make us competitive. And again, the way we came up with this is we studied what other people in the world were doing, and we took their best practices and we figured out how to build a system that is able to really be the best of everything in the world.


    Next slide.

    So to really sum up: What this bill will do is it will lead to a fully secure border and it will solve the humanitarian crisis, and it will make we have a secure border both now and then long into the future. It will protect American wages.

    The things that we've done in this country - whether it's tax reform; whether it's deregulation; whether it's energy independence; all the work you're doing on workforce training and Opportunity Zones and trying to lift people up - that's been having a tremendous effect, but we want to make sure that the immigration system isn't just importing low-wage labor to then keep wages down. We want to make sure that it's growing America's economy. And this will do that.

    It enhances social diversity. It will bring in a wide range of countries. People will come in, and we've figured out how to make sure that we follow the practice that Australia does with diversity pooling to make sure that it gives us a good cross-section of people coming in to maintain what's great about this country.

    And then it also leads to growing the U.S. economy. It will create over $500 billion in tax revenues over 10 years, which is tremendous. And this happens because it will create a lot of jobs. It brings in a lot of people who are - that are paying into the social safety nets, not people who are coming in and then immediately taking from the social safety nets, which right now have to support Americans who are currently citizens.

    So this will be a very tremendous thing, and it will make a lot of money for the country.

    And then, finally, we'll simplify a very complicated system. And then this is one of the amazing things: If you try to become an American citizen today and you go on our website - we have some very smart people in this room - you probably could figure it out, but it would take you a long time. If you go to a country like Canada and you go on their website, you could probably figure it out in about 10 minutes what qualifications you need, what visa you would apply for, and how it would happen. Our system, over time, it's like a coat of paint on top of a coat of paint, on top of a coat of paint.

    What we want to do here is really sand it down to the base and then have a new system that's representative of the times, it's representative of our values, and something we could all be proud of.

    So thanks to the President's leadership, we've worked very, very hard over the last seven months to put this together, really at your direction. This is your plan. We've met now with over 25 Senate offices. We've gotten extensive feedback from them. They've made a lot of good suggestions. We've tightened it up. And we'll be ready to release it very soon.


    We're meeting today with the leadership in the House and the Senate, and hopefully what we can do is have a unified Republican plan for what it is that we're for. And I think that these plans will keep Americans safer, will keep Americans more prosperous, and continue to make sure that the American Dream is available and America continues to be the Promised Land for people throughout the world who want to earn their way to become a citizen.

    So thank you for your leadership. And you have information in your binders, and we have a 22-page summary that we'll be submitting to all your offices. And again, immigration doesn't just touch Homeland Security or Justice or State. It really touches all of your agencies. And so if we can get this right, it will really be something that will be great for our country both in the short-term, medium-term, and the long-term.

    So thank you very much.

    THE PRESIDENT: Fantastic job. Thank you, Jared. This is a commonsense plan. It's a plan where we've studied almost every country. Some good. Some bad. Some tremendously successful. Some not successful at all. And this is the best of everything. And it gives incentive to people.

    It also - we have a problem. I'm called constantly by people; they want to have really smart people working in their companies. We have companies where you need very smart people, and we don't have a provision for smart people. You can graduate from a college, you can be number one in your class in the best college in the country and be thrown out of the country the following day. And we want to be able to keep people in that have this kind of genius.

    Silicon Valley is constantly complaining. They're building places in Canada. They're building places elsewhere because our immigration plans don't allow this. Well, we have to have this. Whether we like it or not, we have to have this. And we'll be able to get it.

    But I've met with many people that have very good intentions, but have to have smart people and they have to have smart people stay in our country and be able to stay here for a period of time - not just for a short period of time, where they can't even buy a house. They don't know if their family should move. So we're doing a lot of things to help people.

    I think as you saw it - as Jared really put it very well - our country has tremendous immigration gap. These are plan after plan after plan, and each plan is very simple. Overly simple. When you put them together, they're indistinguishable. You can't - it becomes a maze of complexity that nobody even knows the answer to. You have people studying, where - you're going to have a really beautiful system of immigration. People are going to be able to come into our country, be proud of our country, and help our country. We want them to help us. You know, it's a two-way street; they have to help us also. And it's met with great popularity.