Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton introduced an immigration bill this week that seems to signal he is the heir apparent to now former Sen. Jeff Sessions, who was sworn in as attorney general this week.
According to the Washington Examiner, Cotton and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) worked together on the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act. it would clamp down on legal immigration and change the process so that immigrants would be admitted into the United States based on their skills, rather than things like joining family members.
"We should admit people into our country who are world class athletes, whether they're competing in sports or Olympics, or world class scientists or senior executives who are making hundreds of thousands of or millions of dollars," Cotton said earlier this week. "What I'm worried of is we've been bringing in low skilled workers who have been hindering wages for a long time."
Cotton has echoed Sessions' comments in the past that argued admitting immigrants with low skills into the U.S. has lowered wages for low-skilled Americans and has taken away opportunities from them.
Cotton wrote about fixing the nation's immigration system in an opinion piece for The New York Times that ran at the end of December.
"Higher wages, better benefits and more security for American workers are features, not bugs, of sound immigration reform," Cotton wrote. "For too long, our immigration policy has skewed toward the interests of the wealthy and powerful: Employers get cheaper labor, and professionals get cheaper personal services like housekeeping. We now need an immigration policy that focuses less on the most powerful and more on everyone else."
Sessions took a tough stance on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities during his time in the Senate.
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