S. 5485: Americans First Immigration Act

Americans First Immigration Act

This bill:

• Requires employers to attest to making a good-faith effort at recruiting American workers prior to hiring an alien, including a prohibition on laying off an American worker in an "essentially equivalent" job during the period starting 90 days before the attestation and lasting until the last day of the alien's employment;

• Requires points-based immigrants, family-based immigrants, refugees, asylees, and aliens adjusting status to swear attachment to the U.S. Constitution and attest they have not participated in acts like genocide, religious persecution, or honor killings;

• Eliminates the visa lottery (55,000 a year), but reserves 3,000 annual visas for religious workers;

• Ends chain migration by limiting family-based immigration to the spouses and minor children of citizens and lawful permanent residents (the cap of 87,934 applies specifically to the spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents, and is reduced by the number of aliens paroled in the second preceding fiscal year);

  • Age-Out: Instead of allowing aliens up to age 24 to retain "child" status as in the House companion (H.R. 8586), this version amends the Child Status Protection Act to freeze an alien's age at the time the petition is filed, allowing an alien who was under 21 when the petition was filed to be processed as a "minor child" regardless of their actual age when adjudicated;

• Replaces and increases the 140,000 annual employment-based visa program with a 192,000 points-based system (reduced by the number of aliens subject to mandatory detention who were never detained or were illegally released during the prior fiscal year), which requires a minimum of 16 points and is awarded based on high salary offers, U.S. STEM degrees, English proficiency, extraordinary achievements, military service, and age;

• Repeals the EB-5 Regional Center Program;

• Imposes a 2-year conditional status on points-based immigrants, which can be revoked for crimes totaling over a year in prison, receiving welfare, or failing to maintain employment at a salary equivalent to or higher than their original job offer;

  • Unlike the House version, the removal of the condition requires a mandatory personal interview with no general waiver authority granted to the Secretary (though late petitions and failures to appear can be excused for good cause);

• Issues a non-binding policy statement that States "should not be obligated" to provide free public education to aliens without lawful permanent residence, rather than statutorily authorizing States to deny K–12 enrollment in order to challenge Plyler v. Doe; and

• Prohibits colleges from charging less than out-of-state tuition rates to aliens without lawful permanent residence, backed by a 5-year ban on enrolling F-1 foreign students for non-compliant institutions.