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How many instances do you think are actually IQ 85 citizens inviting "another random person", as opposed to the probably far from random person that they chose to make pivotal to their self-actualisation and life plans? A $200k cash charge would filter out not just 85 IQ citizens with mail-order brides, but the vast majority of native/foreign couples. Do you think your candidate wants to explain to his electorate why they should be denied a freedom that almost everyone in the developed world enjoys?
Yeah, considering my wife is foreign and I had to sponsor her to come to Canada, I am obviously in favor of that remaining an option, but I don't see why not pick the obvious low hanging fruit that would dramatically slow down or stop chain migration: increase the delay between sponsorships, increase the delay between citizenship and first sponsorship. Sponsoring a family member or spouse for immigration is not a right, it's a privilege, even for natives-born citizens, let alone naturalized ones, and it's perfectly proper for a country that feels that this privilege is being abused to change the parameters of it.
The sponsorship process took, for us, about a year and a half. Here it takes 3-5 years from residence to citizenship, that means that within 5 years of securing their way here, someone could be sponsoring another migrant (and their dependants). If there were a 10 year delay period from citizenship to being able to sponsor a family member, the whole process would be 15 years; I think that would discourage a lot of it. It would probably redirect a lot of chain migration towards countries that allow it faster. Even if they still plan to do it, you've reduced by a factor of three the speed at which it happens. Of course, if I could trust the bureaucrats doing the filtering, exceptions on humanitarian grounds could be allowed, but as of now I don't trust them, so I would rather not allow it.
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He’s almost certainly right that chain migration vastly trumps that now. It’s some Colombian family slow immigrating their entire family to the US versus an American bringing a girl home now. Sometimes they even just do it for money and the marriage is fake. There is an active market for that in Miami.
Trump importing a foreign eastern mail order bride is a very small part of the market.
We’ve already imported the 15% of non-Americans who can now bring in their local ties. It’s not foreign brides being brought in any more. It’s Ilhan Omar bringing in her brother.
In which case money isn’t even the right metric but it would filter out a lot.
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