Hell, Republicans are the ones that are actually trying to improve employment based immigration. I actually believe Republicans to have the most reasonable immigration policies.
You're quite wrong. The current DOJ head is the most anti-legal immigration (incl. high-skilled immigration) person to ever lead that department. Also Trump, in his campaign website said the most extreme thing that any Republican candidate has said -- that the US would "pause issuing employment-based green cards until every American is employed." Things can't get any more extreme than that.
Trump has also proposed pursuing a merit based immigration system.[0]
A Republican representative has proposed legislation for the millions of undocumented immigrants brought as children.[1]
A Republican introduced a bill to improve the E2 visa program.[2]
I grew up as an undocumented immigrant in California (I left voluntarily after graduating high school to live in Mexico). I have yet to see something to actually improve _legal_ immigration from the Democrats. All they talk about is a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers without actually trying to improve immigration based on merit.
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have proposed, and sponsored, legislation that would increase legal immigration, and help undocumented immigrants gain legal status. The problem is that while the vast majority of Democrats in Congress support such reform, less than 50% of Republicans support it.
Just as an example, take a look at the bill that came closest to greatly improving our legal immigration system[1], and helping undocumented immigrants (S.744 of the 113th Congress), which passed with a super-majority in the Senate[2]. It was promoted and sponsored by some very well-known Republican Senators (e.g. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, etc).
This bill contained provisions that would have fixed many of issues discussed in this thread, like what these unscrupulous consulting companies are doing with the current system. It would have made it easier for skilled immigrants to get green cards, for foreign students to stay in the country after they graduate, among many many other things. It was a compromise between parties, but yet it was a beautiful bill.
But Republicans in the House, lead by then-Speaker John Boehner prevented the bill from even being voted on. If the bill had been allowed a vote, it would have easily passed the House, and become law today. But a minority of the House (i.e. a majority of the Republicans in the House) unilaterally blocked passage of the bill. John Boehner actually said that the Republican party would "be over" if the 11-12 million undocumented immigrants were allowed to acquire citizenship eventually (as the bill would have enabled them to).
He's not trying to reform it, too many of his friends' profit margins rely on this behavior. It's probably more likely that they didn't bribe the right people and now have to be taxed with a fine (without admitting wrongdoing).
Great, but without any counter arguments you're not going to convince me. What specific problems do you see with this reform?
Real life is more nuanced than "everything Trump does is bad," and companies (these three especially) have abused H1B to keep wages low and decrease employee leverage, so I'm glad to see a crack down.
