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Trump Announces New Immigration Plan
May 16, 2019
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden today and laid out a sweeping new immigration plan. It would change who gets to immigrate to the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We want immigrants coming in. We cherish the open door that we want to create for our country. But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill.
CORNISH: In a historic shift, the new plan would favor highly skilled immigrants over people who are coming to join family members already here. Immigration, of course, is a divisive topic. And this proposal faces rough going in Congress. NPR's John Burnett, he covers immigration. He's with us on the line from Austin, Texas. Hey there, John.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: What are the specifics of the president's plan?
BURNETT: So this plan would change a half century of visa policy. The president wants to bring in more skilled immigrants, as he said - those who are younger, those with college educations, English skills and existing job offers. He wants American immigration to look more like Canada's and Australia's. They have a point-based or a merit-based system. Immigrants with higher qualifications would get more points.
Trump has always wanted to reduce family-based immigration. If you're a foreign-born citizen here, you can bring over your spouse or your parents, and today that's the dominant system. And Trump complains it brings in too many unskilled immigrants. He wants to create a whole new visa category, the Build America visa.
CORNISH: What's been the reception to the plan so far?
BURNETT: Well, Audie, even before he stepped up to the mic in the Rose Garden this afternoon, the leaked version of this plan was being slammed from the left and the right. Immigration hard-liners say it allows too many immigrants into the country. Every year, it would keep visas at the current level, which is about 1.1 million visas a year. On the left, I called Ben Johnson. He's executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. And he says his problem is that Trump is pitting one group of immigrants against another.
BEN JOHNSON: The idea that family immigration is somehow a drag on the American economy or the American community is just wrong. You know, the ability for people to live with their families is an important part of them being successful in their new country.
BURNETT: And critics say one of the big problems with Trump's plan on first glance is why - and why it's going to face such opposition is it doesn't say anything about the nearly 700,000 DREAMers. These are the young people who were brought to the country illegally as children. They now have work permits and protection against deportation, but it's tenuous. And Democrats have been insisting from the beginning that the administration has to do something about the DREAMers.
CORNISH: This plan is also supposed to address border security and asylum applicants. What does it say about that?
BURNETT: Well, there's not many specifics that he gave today. It creates a self-sustaining border security trust fund that will be funded, he says, from fees generated at the border crossings. He said his plan will screen out asylum-seekers who have frivolous claims of persecution back home, and they'll be promptly returned. But again, we need to wait and see the particulars of the plan that the White House should be releasing soon.
CORNISH: Meanwhile, John, what's the situation like at the border at this point?
BURNETT: Well, the White House continues to point to the crisis at the border to drive the debate on his immigration reforms. A 2 1/2-year-old Guatemalan toddler died in an El Paso-area hospital just on Tuesday night. The Guatemalan consul says he had pneumonia. He'd crossed the border with his mother some five weeks earlier. And remember. This is the fourth migrant child to die in the last six months. The crossing numbers are still out of sight. Last month, more than 109,000 migrants were taken into custody after crossing the border without authorization.
The Border Patrol says it's so overwhelmed it's building tent cities to house them there on the border. And it's resorting to fly them to other cities, looking for detention space. And this is an especially dangerous time to cross the river. Spring rains have swollen the Rio Grande. And earlier this month, a raft capsized in the swift current, and two children drowned.
CORNISH: That's NPR's John Burnett. Thank you for your reporting.
BURNETT: You bet, Audie.
知识点笔记：
1.sweeping:（变化）巨大的、影响深远的
e.g.1.The new government has started to make sweeping changes in the economy...
2.The armed forces would be given sweeping new powers.
3....sweeping economic reforms.
2.merit and skill:才能和技能
3.shift: change
historic shift历史性改变(名词)
回忆：昨天(190517)she began to feel her attitude shift（动词）
4.going:进展、情况 good/bad/tough/hard/slow going
e.g. 1.He has her support to fall back on when the going gets tough...
2.Though the talks had been hard going at the start, they had become more friendly.
3.I'm getting the work done, but it's slow going.
4.We climbed the mountain in three hours, which wasn't bad going.
5.point-based：积分制
6.dominant:形容词，占支配（统治）地位的；重要的
e.g.1....a change which would maintain his party's dominant position in Scotland...
2.She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.
回忆:前面学到dominate the market占领市场（动词）
7.reception: reaction反应
e.g.1.Mr Mandela was given a tumultuous reception in Washington...
2.He received a cool reception to his speech.
8.leaked version of the plan.（leak泄露；缝隙）
release the particulars of the plan（发布）
9.slam这个词很有意思。看美剧，会听到家长说孩子Don't slam the door.什么意思呢？就是孩子喜欢砰的一声把门关上，家长就会教育孩子不要这样拿门出气，哈哈。
引申一下就知道，slam指别人的反应时，肯定也是不好的，指激烈抨击（新闻报道常用词）
e.g. Local media slammed plans to build a prison in the area.
10.hardliner：看这个构词中有hard就可以猜到，这个词指强硬派
e.g. Hardliners may yet move against him, but their success might be limited.
11.pit ...against...使这两者竞争、对立
e.g.1.You will be pitted against people who are every bit as good as you are...
2.This was one man pitted against the universe.
12.drag:拖；拉，可以联想到引申为拖后腿
e.g.Any slowdown in the economy is going to be a drag on the President's re-election campaign.
13.deportation：驱逐出境
e.g.1.the mass deportation of refugees
2.The government issued a deportation order against the four men.
14.tenuous：脆弱的；（理由）站不住脚的、牵强的
e.g. The cultural and historical links between the many provinces were seen to be very tenuous.
15.address border security and asylum applicants
address:解决问题
回忆：address the issue
asylum-applicant
回忆 asylum-seeker:refugee
16.screen out: 注意out, 因此这个短语是筛选后剔除
e.g.The company screened out applicants motivated only by money.
17.Guatemalan：危地马拉
18.toddler：刚学走路的小孩
19.swell：肿胀，这里指河水上涨
e.g. The heavy rain swelled the river.
Rio Grande：（美墨之间的、边境线上）格兰德河
20.capsize：翻船
e.g.1.The sea got very rough and the boat capsized...
2.I didn't count on his capsizing the raft.
21.current:用作形容词指现在的，用作名词指各种流，水流、洋流、气流、电流以及（思想的）潮流
e.g.1.Under normal conditions, the ocean currents of the tropical Pacific travel from east to west...
2.The couple were swept away by the strong current.
22.You bet. 相当于You're welcome.
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