The Atlantic

How the White House's Immigration Reforms Might Backfire

Social engineering through immigration policy isn’t simple—and such efforts often produce dramatic, unintended consequences.
Source: Carlos Barria / Reuters

Trump adviser Stephen Miller says the new White House plan to amend U.S. immigration law, introduced by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, is “the largest proposed reform to our immigration policy in half a century.”

The White House wants to revisit the 1965 Immigration Act, which opened America’s doors wide to immigrants of color and produced the most sweeping demographic transformation of the country in its history.

Critics of the proposal as a thinly veiled effort to constrict the flow of nonwhite groups to the United States. The alt-right leader Richard Spencer, welcoming such a development, the bill “sounds awesome.”

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